How do criminals get their guns? Are there observable patterns to gun crime? Who is at the greatest risk of injury, or causing injury to others, from firearm use? Which gun-safety practices are most effective at preventing accidental injury? The answers to these and other basic questions remain difficult and obscure in part thanks to a senseless ban, on the books for a decade, that limits research on gun violence and denies researchers and even police and prosecutors access to federal gun data.

Six months ago, Americans reacted with horror to the slaughter of 20 children and six school employees at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Suddenly, gun safety legislation was front and center everywhere, including Washington.Then in April, a recalcitrant Senate succumbed to pressure from gun manufacturers and the NRA’s leadership and failed to pass even the most modest measure, a bill to extend background checks to gun shows and Internet sales. The president was angry, the familie

Iran’s presidential election presents a paradox. The vote was free enough for Hassan Rohani to score a shocking win and for the favored conservative candidate to finish a dismal third. And yet it was blatantly unfair because hundreds of reformist and pragmatic candidates were blocked from running. For policymakers in the U.S. and Europe, this presents a challenge: How should they respond to this remarkable upset victory for Rohani, who was the eventual candidate of Iranian reformists and is also

CAMBRIDGE ― The term “currency wars” is a catchy way of saying “competitive devaluation.” In the wake of the sharp fall in the value of the yen over the last six months, owing to the monetary component of Japan’s efforts to jump-start its economy, the issue is expected to feature prominently on the agenda at the G8’s upcoming summit in Northern Ireland. But should it?According to the International Monetary Fund, competitive devaluation occurs when countries are “manipulating exchange rates…to ga

NEW DELHI ― A casual reader of India’s newspapers for the last several weeks would be forgiven for wondering whether the country was suddenly bereft of political controversy, sex scandals, or official corruption ― normally the standard headline fare here. The newspapers’ front pages have had space ― under massive banner headlines ― only for a topic normally reserved for the sports pages: cricket.The cause is not some particularly exciting test match. Instead, the public has been outraged by luri

Let the geeks, and we use the term endearingly, argue over the changes Apple Inc. announced this week to its mobile operating system. Our focus is on something more prosaic: an advertisement ― and what that ad says about the state of U.S. manufacturing. Apple’s latest slick promotion touts the “Designed by Apple in California” line it includes on its devices (conveniently overlooking the second line, “Assembled in China”). At the end of the ad, a somber voice intones: “This is our signature. And

Conservative Republicans in our nation’s capital have managed to accomplish something they only dreamed of when Tea Partiers streamed into Congress at the start of 2011. They’ve basically shut down Congress. Their refusal to compromise is working just as they hoped: No jobs agenda. No budget. No grand bargain on the deficit. No background checks on guns. Nothing on climate change. No tax reform. No hike in the minimum wage. Nothing so far on immigration reform.It’s as if an entire branch of the

Should the U.S. be taking economic lessons from India? Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich thinks so. Perhaps not from India as a whole, but at least from the booming western state of Gujarat, which has enjoyed 10 percent-plus growth under its controversial chief minister, Narendra Modi. “If we had Gujarat’s growth rates over the last 10 years,” Gingrich told Modi in a recent Skype video conversation, “we would have been a lot healthier country than we are right now.” While the “Gujarat model” ha

PARIS ― Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor on the lam for having dumped some classified documents on the desk of a British reporter, says that he doesn’t consider himself a hero, but his girlfriend’s blog paints a different picture, with delusions of grandeur dating back more than three months. If only the NSA’s PRISM Program was as significant as their sense of self-importance.Snowden’s Hawaii-based dancer-girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, repeatedly refers to herself as a

For so many years, Iran has been a popular neighbor among most Arab states, largely because of its unremitting hostility toward Israel and the West.But now, the tables have turned, and its past behavior counts for nothing. Iran has lost the friendship and support of almost every Arab and Muslim state, leaving it as one the least liked nations in the world. Its only true competitor for that title right now seems to be North Korea.Paradoxically, it would seem, while Iran’s popularity has plummeted