Start of the project

The award “LEAP-HI: Understanding and engineering the ecosystem of firearms: prevalence, safety, and firearm-related harms” (National Science Foundation grant CMMI-1953135) officially started on September 1, 2020.

As a prelude to the project, PI Professor Maurizio Porfiri from the New York University Tandon School of Engineering, published a study regarding the drivers of firearm acquisition in the aftermath of mass shootings. This study, co-authored by Roni Barak-Ventura, research assistant in Porfiri’s Dynamical Systems Laboratory, and Manuel Ruiz Marín of the Technical University of Cartagena, Spain, demonstrates that fear of new regulations is the main cause of the upticks in firearm purchases following gruesome mass shootings.

Read the full paper “Self-Protection versus Fear of Stricter Firearm Regulations: Examining the Drivers of Firearm Acquisitions in the Aftermath of a Mass Shooting” in Cell’s Patterns here.

Read the press release about the article and the award on New York University’s page here.