The Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen undermines the ability of cities and states to regulate firearms safety. Nonetheless, we remain hopeful that firearm violence can decline even after the Bruen decision. Several promising public health approaches have gained broader adoption in recent years. This essay examines the key drivers of community firearm violence and reviews promising strategies to reverse those conditions, including community violence intervention (CVI) programs and place-based and structural interventions.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 90-92 [Access article in PDF] Christian Views on Ritual Practice The Ongoing Creation of Loving Community: Christian Ritual and Ethics Jay T. RockNational Council of Churches of ChristAt the center of Christian practice is an ethical imperative: "This is my commandment," Jesus says; "Love one another as I have loved you" (John 15:12). This principle of active love lies at the heart of Christian living.The (...) argument about who is to be included in the circle of those to be loved, much alive in Jesus' own day, continues unabated. Christians do not agree whether the "sisters and brothers" whom one is instructed to love in various passages of the Christian canon refers only to the family of those in the Church, or to the family of all humankind. But there is certainly agreement that simply professing love is not enough: the love God has given is fully embraced only in being done.Given such a central emphasis on reconciling, active love, it is not surprising to find Christian ritual almost always directly connected to, and fully completed in, ethical behavior in the world. Even in the important ways in which Christian rites serve to open the individual and community to receive God, to become aware of the presence of the Ultimate Reality in their lives, one finds implicit links to acting in love. Christian ritual is itself incarnational: it continuously creates and recreates a community into which it incorporates individuals, and it reactualizes moments of sacred history in a way that opens them to the active participation and concrete action of the people.Some comments on the nature and significance of commemoration in the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, or Lord's Supper, may illustrate what I mean. These are the central liturgical celebrations of Christianity, one recalling the baptism of Jesus by John in the Jordan River, the other, more complex, connected to the events of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus in Jerusalem. They are commemorations of past historical events, the memory of which is preserved in the theology and practice of the community. But their celebration by the community makes these events existentially present, and their meanings real and accessible, in several ways.Through Baptism, individuals enter into the Jesus community, and participate in the life of Christ. The rite is understood to effect a permanent bond between the one baptized, and Jesus, in whose name she is baptized. The one being baptized is taken down into water, and there is understood to die and rise with Christ: the ritual "makes present again what God has done through Jesus" and brings the Christian into direct, existential relation to the "actual happening of salvation in Christ." 1 Through this connection, the person undergoes a transition from the ways of "death" and "darkness" into the way of "light."The Eucharistic celebration, similarly, provides believers a way of entering into the events of Jesus' death and resurrection. In it, Christians both take part in these [End Page 90] acts of redemption--his death and rising again--and also take into themselves the body and blood of Jesus. The sacrament is a central way in which Christians partake of/take part in the Body of Christ. The rite commemorates a past event, but more importantly, it brings to present life the person of Christ, and allows active participation in the ongoing, communal expression of God's self-giving in Christ.In these rituals, a particular kind of historical memory is at work: that of anamnesis, which the Lutheran liturgist Frank Senn suggests might be best approximated in English as "reactualization." 2 This kind of remembering involves not simply a return to past events, but the placing of the past into the present situation. Ethicist John Pawlikowski reminds us that this concept has roots in the Hebrew Scriptures, in the biblical sense of zakar: just as it is only in being remembered by God that we continue in existence, remembering in this sense "brings the past as close as possible so that it becomes... (shrink)

This article reviews models of the cerebellum and motor learning, from the landmark papers by Marr and Albus through those of the present time. The unique architecture of the cerebellar cortex is ideally suited for pattern recognition, but how is pattern recognition incorporated into motor control and learning systems? The present analysis begins with a discussion of exactly what the cerebellar cortex needs to regulate through its anatomically defined projections to premotor networks. Next, we examine various models showing how the (...) microcircuitry in the cerebellar cortex could be used to achieve its regulatory functions. Having thus defined what it is that Purkinje cells in the cerebellar cortex must learn, we then evaluate theories of motor learning. We examine current models of synaptic plasticity, credit assignment, and the generation of training information, indicating how they could function cooperatively to guide the processes of motor learning. (shrink)

In this interview, C. P. Goodman invites British Polanyi scholar Richard T. Allen to reflect on his interest in Polanyi’s philosophical ideas and share what he believes is valuable in his thought.

Male-male competition is involved in inter- and intrasexual selection, with both endocrine and psychological factors presumably contributing to reproductive success in human males. We examined relationships among men’s naturally occurring testosterone, their self-perceived mate value, self-esteem, sociosexuality, and expected likelihood of approaching attractive women versus situations leading to child involvement. We then monitored changes in these measures in male rowers from Cambridge, UK, following a manipulated “win” or “loss” as a result of an indoor rowing contest. Baseline results revealed that (...) men with heightened testosterone and SPMV values typically had greater inclinations toward engaging in casual sexual relationships and a higher likelihood of approaching attractive women in a hypothetical social situation. As anticipated, both testosterone and SPMV increased following a manipulated “victory” and were associated with heightened sociosexuality, and increased expectations toward approaching attractive women versus individuals who would involve them in interacting with children after the race. SPMV and self-esteem appeared to mediate some of the effects of testosterone on post-race values. These findings are considered in the broader context of individual trade-offs between mating and parental effort and a model of the concurrent and dynamic androgenic and psychological influences contributing to male reproductive effort and success. (shrink)

Managers vs. Owners: The Struggle for Corporate Control in American Democracy deals with a subject of profound importance: understanding the place of the modern corporation in a democratic society. This latest volume in the acclaimed Ruffin Series in Business Ethics describes how the balance between corporate power and government regulation has changed with the interests of society as a whole. The first section examines the debates over the rules that individuals or organized groups would agree to follow in their interactions (...) to accrue social advantages. The second section looks at management's point of view and tells how law promotes the need for managerial collective action and provides a vocabulary for articulating management as a profession. The authors conclude by looking at the impact of collective investor action - especially institutional investors - on the efforts by managers to preserve their autonomy. This examination of the inherent conflicts between the interests of corporate owners, the interests of the larger society, and the interests of managers who run corporations will be essential reading for students, scholars, and professionals concerned with the place of the large corporation in a democratic society. (shrink)

R T Allen; The Meaning of Life and Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 25, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 47–58, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9.

Professor Flew has recently sought to demolish the philosophical pretensions of Marx and the Marxists by the use of Hume's Fork and Popper's demand for falsifiable consequences. Marx tried to derive matters of ‘fact and existence’ from ‘relations of ideas’, which Hume's Fork states to be impossible. From this and not from empirical study, he derived predictions for the future course of history which neither he nor his followers have ever properly tested by empirical enquiries. Nor have they ever provided (...) any clear, unambiguous and therefore testable formulations of those predictions. In particular, Flew claims, they have never given any concrete content to the central notion of ‘alienation’ such that an Index of Alienation could be drawn up and enquiries could be made as to whether, for example, the workers are more or less alienated under the private or public ownership of factories. Both faults stem from Marx's continuation of German, specifically Hegelian, philosophy. (shrink)

R T Allen; Rational Autonomy: the destruction of freedom, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 16, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 199–207, https://doi.org/10.

R T Allen; Idealism, Theism and Education: some footnotes to Gordon & White, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 21, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 283–.

R T Allen; The Philosophy of Michael Polanyi and its Significance for Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 12, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 167–.

This new study of modern educational thought relates the selected thinkers and theories to a profound change in the way in which men have come to understand themselves and the world. The theories of Rousseau, Kant, Froebel, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche contemporary English-speaking philosophers and schemes of education, Sartre, Helvetius and B.F. Skinner, are shown, in separate studies, to be variations upon the theme of man as a self-defining and self-legislating subject in a world that does nothing to present him with (...) any Law or Way. Education therefore becomes a problem, a matter of arbitrary selection of what the young are to be taught and to do. (shrink)

R T Allen; ‘Because I Say So!’ Some Limitations Upon the Rationalisation of Authority, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 21, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Page.

In the United States, only 6% of the 1.5 million faculty in degree-granting postsecondary institutions is Black. Research shows that, while many institutions tout the idea of diversity recruitment, not much progress has been made to diversify faculty ranks, especially at research-intensive institutions. We're Not Ok shares the experiences of Black faculty to take the reader on a journey, from the obstacles of landing a full-time faculty position through the unique struggles of being a Black educator at a predominantly white (...) institution, along with how these deterrents impact inclusion, retention, and mental health. The book provides practical strategies and recommendations for graduate students, faculty, staff, and administrators, along with changemakers, to make strides in diversity, equity, and inclusion. More than a presentation of statistics and anecdotes, it is the start of a dialogue with the intent of ushering actual change that can benefit Black faculty, their students, and their institutions. (shrink)