This book explores and explains how traditional and alternative media have framed the issues of gun trafficking into Mexico, drug-related violence, and spillover violence. It reveals how gun trafficking and drug-related violence are social problems for Mexico, while spillover violence is portrayed as a moral panic for the US. Readers will gain a better understanding of how the media portrays and frames the criminal activity that is occurring in Mexico and how it impacts the US. The book analyzes national newspapers from both sides of the US–Mexico border—The New York Times and El Universal—and draws on a theoretical framework of moral panics, social problems, and cultivation theory. It reveals six framing devices, "the blame game," "worthy and unworthy victims," "positive aspects," "negative aspects of gun trafficking," "indirect mention of gun trafficking," and "direct mention of gun trafficking," which are utilized by The New York Times and El Universal to discuss and frame the issue of gun trafficking into Mexico and its impact on Mexico’s border violence. Mexico’s Drug-Related Violence will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in the perception of media and crime, as well as those researching the topic of drug cartels and drug-related violence.

Guns, Crime, and Punishment in America assembles a diverse group of the nation's leading authorities on guns and gun violence to present the most up-to-date research currently available. Exploring such controversial issues as gun- tracing initiatives, the possible extension of the Brady Bill, gun-oriented policing, federal law enforcement initiatives such as "Project Exile," and civil litigation against gun manufacturers, Guns, Crime, and Punishment in America embarks upon a more balanced and nuanced discussion about firearms. Though the book's contributors operate from a wide variety of political perspectives and methodological approaches, a central desire unifies the book: to end the extreme polarization that currently characterizes the debate on guns, and generate reasonable and practical gun policies in the United States. Contributors: Sara Sun Beale, Anthony A. Braga, Carl Bogus, Jenny Berrien, Abigail Caplovitz, Philip J. Cook, Garth Davies, Christopher Eisgruber, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Mark Geistfeld, James B. Jacobs, Dan M. Kahan, David Kairys, David B. Kopel, Sanford Levinson, Jens Ludwig, Daniel C. Richman, Jerome H. Skolnick, Richard Slotkin, Chris Winship, and Franklin E. Zimring.

For years proposals for gun control and the ownership of firearms have been among the most contentious issues in American politics. For public authorities to make reasonable decisions on these matters, they must take into account facts about the relationship between guns and violence as well as conflicting constitutional claims and divided public opinion. In performing these tasks, legislators need adequate data and research to judge both the effects of firearms on violence and the effects of different violence control policies. Readers of the research literature on firearms may sometimes find themselves unable to distinguish scholarship from advocacy. Given the importance of this issue, there is a pressing need for a clear and unbiased assessment of the existing portfolio of data and research. Firearms and Violence uses conventional standards of science to examine three major themes - firearms and violence, the quality of research, and the quality of data available. The book assesses the strengths and limitations of current databases, examining current research studies on firearm use and the efforts to reduce unjustified firearm use and suggests ways in which they can be improved.

The book includes an analysis of the constitutionality of many recommended policies and data from a national public opinion poll that reflects support among the majority of Americans—including gun owners—for stronger gun policies.

The development of crime policy in the United States for many generations has been hampered by a drastic shortage of knowledge and data, an excess of partisanship and instinctual responses, and a one-way tendency to expand the criminal justice system. Even if a three-decade pattern of prison growth came to a full stop in the early 2000s, the current decade will be by far the most punitive in U.S. history, hitting some minority communities particularly hard. The book examines the history, scope, and effects of the revolution in America's response to crime since 1970. Henry Ruth and Kevin Reitz offer a comprehensive, long-term, pragmatic approach to increase public understanding of and find improvements in the nation's response to crime. Concentrating on meaningful areas for change in policing, sentencing, guns, drugs, and juvenile crime, they discuss such topics as new priorities for the use of incarceration; aggressive policing; the war on drugs; the need to switch the gun control debate to a focus on crime gun regulation; a new focus on offenders' transition from confinement to freedom; and the role of private enterprise. A book that rejects traditional liberal and conservative outlooks, The Challenge of Crime takes a major step in offering new approaches for the nation's responses to crime.