Adam Lankford is a criminal justice professor at The University of Alabama. He is currently working in the Washington, D.C. area and will return to the area at 3:30 p.m. (ET) Aug. 26. The best way to reach him is via email: [email protected].

Lankford's latest research has revealed empirical evidence linking civilian gun ownership rates to high rates of public mass shootings, not just in the United States, but worldwide. His study is the first to analyze public mass shootings across the globe. Lankford found that, despite having just 5 percent of the world's population, the U.S. had more than 31 percent of the world's public mass shootings between 1966-2012. More information can be found here: http://press-news.org/150775-us-has-5-percent-of-world-s-population-but-had-31-percent-of-its-public-mass-shooters-from.html

Lankford is the author of The Myth of Martyrdom: What Really Drives Suicide Bombers, Rampage Shooters, and Other Self-Destructive Killers, which offers unprecedented evidence that many suicide terrorists are suicidal, in the conventional sense, and are not simply driven by ideology or commitment to the cause. This directly contradicts what most experts have insisted about suicide terrorists for decades.

Lankford has written for The New York Times, Foreign Policy, Wired, The Daily Beast, New Scientist, The Mail on Sunday, Scientific American, The Huffington Post, and numerous peer-reviewed journals. His research has been featured by CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, BBC World News Television, NPR, BBC World Radio, CBS Radio, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, Time, USA Today, and many other national and international outlets.