The persistent educational digital divide and its impact on societal inequality.

Computers and the Internet are widely recognized as fundamental to academic and future success on both the individual and the societal level. Moreover, the academic success of school-age children is now increasingly tied to access to educational technology, a reality that became even more apparent during the pandemic. While academic performance is viewed as the major outcome of using educational technology, this study looks at a crucial early stage in the educational technology value chain, specifically; 1) to what extent do students use computers and the Internet in their homes and at school and 2) what is the extent and nature of disparities in student access to educational technology. This study was conducted using the national CPS 2019 Computer and Internet Use Survey of 23,064 school age children. We used bivariate tables and multivariate logistic regression analysis to analyze the data. Results indicate that substantial disparities in the use of educational technology exist in the U.S. Overall, 28.0% of school age children reported they did not use the Internet at school or at home and another 22.8% reported using the Internet at home but not at school. Significantly, individual and community demographic characteristics and household and school technology resources contribute to these disparities. It is clear that if fundamental educational technology and the resources needed to effectively achieve academic success are unavailable in the home, then they must be provided in schools. Without educational technology and resources, the societal value added through growing use of this technology will not materialize for our students. We conclude that committing to increasing educational technology resources in the schools will have multiple future societal benefits and improve the effectiveness of the educational technology value chain.

Armed and prohibited: characteristics of unlawful owners of legally purchased firearms.

BACKGROUND: A substantial proportion of individuals who lawfully purchase firearms later become unlawful owners ('prohibited firearm owners'), usually following events associated with an increased risk for future violence. This high-risk population has not previously been described. We aimed to characterise all individuals in California's Armed and Prohibited Persons System (APPS), a statewide programme for recovering firearms from individuals who legally purchased them and later became prohibited from ownership. METHODS: We used univariate and bivariate statistics to describe and compare prohibited firearm owners in APPS with a random sample of non-prohibited firearm owners in relation to age, sex, race/ethnicity and type of firearms owned as of 1 February 2015. We also characterised the geographical distribution of prohibited firearm owners and described their prohibitions. RESULTS: Of the 18 976 prohibited firearm owners, most were men (93%), half were white (53%) and the mean age was 47 years. Prohibited firearm owners were more likely to be male and to be black or Hispanic people than non-prohibited owners. Both prohibited and non-prohibited firearm owners had an average of 2.6 firearms, mostly handguns. Nearly half (48%) of prohibited firearm owners had a felony conviction. Extrapolating from our findings, we estimated that there are approximately 100 000 persons in the USA who unlawfully maintained ownership of their firearms following a felony conviction. CONCLUSIONS: Retention of firearms among persons who become lawfully prohibited from possessing them is common in California. Given the nationwide dearth of a programme to recover such weapons, this is likely true in other states as well.

Impact of California firearms sales laws and dealer regulations on the illegal diversion of guns.

OBJECTIVE: The available evidence suggests that more restrictive state firearm sales laws can reduce criminal access to guns. California has firearm-related laws that are more stringent than many other states and regulates its retail firearms dealers to a unique degree. This research seeks to examine the effect of more restrictive state gun laws and regulations on the illegal diversion of guns to criminals. DESIGN: Survival analyses are used to determine whether state firearm sales laws, particularly California's legal context and regulatory regime, impact the distribution of time-to-crime of recovered firearms in that state relative to other US states. SETTING: USA. SUBJECTS: 225,392 traced firearms, where the first retail purchasers and the gun possessors were different individuals, recovered by law enforcement agencies between 2003 and 2006. RESULTS: The increased stringency of state-level firearms laws and regulations leads to consistently older firearms being recovered. California was associated with the oldest recovered crime guns compared with guns associated with other states. These patterns persisted regardless of whether firearms were first purchased within the recovery state or in another state. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that more restrictive gun sales laws and gun dealer regulations do make it more difficult for criminals to acquire new guns first purchased at retail outlets.

Interpreting the empirical evidence on illegal gun market dynamics.

Thousands of Americans are killed by gunfire each year, and hundreds of thousands more are injured or threatened with guns in robberies and assaults. The burden of gun violence in urban areas is particularly high. Critics suggest that the results of firearm trace data and gun trafficking investigation studies cannot be used to understand the illegal supply of guns to criminals and, therefore, that regulatory and enforcement efforts designed to disrupt illegal firearms markets are futile in addressing criminal access to firearms. In this paper, we present new data to address three key arguments used by skeptics to undermine research on illegal gun market dynamics. We find that criminals rely upon a diverse set of illegal diversion pathways to acquire guns, gun traffickers usually divert small numbers of guns, newer guns are diverted through close-to-retail diversions from legal firearms commerce, and that a diverse set of gun trafficking indicators are needed to identify and shut down gun trafficking pathways.

Linking crime guns: the impact of ballistics imaging technology on the productivity of the Boston Police Department's Ballistics Unit.

Ballistics imaging technology has received national attention as a potent tool for moving the law enforcement response to violent gun criminals forward by linking multiple crime scenes to one firearm. This study examines the impact of ballistics imaging technology on the productivity of the Boston Police Department's Ballistics Unit. Using negative binomial regression models to analyze times series data on ballistics matches, we find that ballistics imaging technology was associated with a more than sixfold increase in the monthly number of ballistics matches made by the Boston Police Department's Ballistics Unit. Cost-effectiveness estimates and qualitative evidence also suggest that ballistics imaging technology allows law enforcement agencies to make hits that would not have been possible using traditional ballistics methods.