BALTIMORE, MD, May 13, 2025 – As communities across the United States continue to confront the devastating toll of mass shootings, new research reveals a staggering economic dimension to these tragedies. A study published in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science finds that mass shootings cause an estimated $27 billion in annual lost revenue for U.S. retailers driven by sharp declines in foot traffic, reduced transaction volume and long-term store closures.
BALTIMORE, MD, May 13, 2025 – Researchers who took a close look at loosened concealed carry laws between 2010 and 2017 have found that “Shall Issue” regulations, which remove local authority discretion on the issuance of concealed carry gun permits, contribute to a significant increase in handgun purchases. At the same time, the researchers found that in states that adopted “Permitless Carry” policies, there was no noticeable change in gun purchases.
The time has come: REAL ID will finally be implemented in less than one week, about 20 years after it was initially proposed.
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As coronavirus ravages the U.S. population, the disease may be taking uninfected people with it. More people died from March through May this year than died last year, even after stripping out the numbers of people who have succumbed to COVID-19, according to a new study out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Researchers have identified increases in deaths during the pandemic compared with previous years. Although this is not surprising in itself, many of these excess deaths are not due to COVID-19. The authors of a new study took a look at the demographics of this increase.
The seven-day University of Wisconsin coronavirus percent positive rose to 2.9% on Wednesday. UW’s two largest residence halls, Sellery and Witte, required mandatory testing Monday amid these rising cases. University Spokesperson Meredith McGlone said in an interview the Wisconsin State Journal that UW has modified the testing process to quickly identify rises in cases and case clusters.
As COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths surge, experts see no sign of the increases slowing down unless there are some major changes. “It took about seven and a half months or so get to the first 100,000 cases in Wisconsin,” said Ajay Sethi, assistant professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It took about 36 days only to get the next 100,000 cases. We’re on track to getting the next 100,000 cases 20 days later.”
With COVID-19 cases increasing in 46 states, 10 of which broke single-day records for new cases on Thursday, America has officially entered what experts refer to as the “exponential” phase of spread — a rapid multiplying of cases that can’t be contained through traditional measures. On Thursday alone, the U.S. saw 160,000 new cases of the virus, more than any day since the pandemic began.
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