With an overview of the topic that provides historical context, this work focuses mainly on developments in gun control within the US. The revised edition offers greater coverage of how gun-related issues are being handled in other parts of the world, as well as detail on the proliferation of small arms such as AK-47 rifles and grenade launchers.

Privacy can mean different things to different people. It can mean seclusion, or it could mean the ability to control access to personal information. Most Americans expect that a letter will get to its destination unopened and that no one will be allowed to secretly listen in on phone calls without a court order. If the police suspect someone has committed a crime, they have to obtain a warrant from a judge before searching the person's home. Besides protecting specific places and activities, privacy can also mean protection for intimacy and family life, and indeed, the right to make...

This third edition includes bibliography, chronology, introduction, annotated bibliography, appendixes, and certain legal cases.

"Internet Predators" discusses the struggle to combat criminal and antisocial activity online and to prevent victimization - without excessively restricting the freedom that has helped make the online world a vital part of the U.S. economy and society. It focuses on the individual online user and on what service providers, regulatory agencies, law enforcement officials, legislators, and others can and should do to protect the online public.

A comprehensive guide to gay rights. This edition includes approximately 40 per cent more material than its previous edition, especially in the bibliography.

Clear and comprehensive, "Prisons" examines the state of U.S. prisons and related issues. It focuses on the development of prisons in the United States and how the competing goals of punishment and rehabilitation have shaped the evolution of corrections. The financial costs of running prisons and the mixed record of private prisons are examined, and laws and legislation relating to issues of incarceration are reviewed.

The casino boom in the 1980s and 1990s brought national attention to legalized gambling throughout the United States. Whereas advocates for the rapidly growing gaming industry contend that gambling will revitalize local economies with more jobs, tourism, and tax money for the host communities, others claim that much of that tax money rarely reaches the majority of community residents and, instead, brings a higher rate of crime, violence, and bankruptcy, not to mention encourages compulsive gambling. Because casinos are still being built and lottery jackpots are continuing to grow, the debates...

Dating back to the colonial period, immigration is now one of the most important - and divisive - issues facing citizens of the United States today as they enter the 21st century. A dramatic rise in illegal immigration, the demise of the cold war, a rapidly aging population, and the emergence of an international war on terror have combined during the past 15 years to create an untested environment in which immigration policy must be developed. Despite the failure of the anti-immigrant lobby to see proposition 187 - which would cut off social services to illegal immigrants - pass, both the...

The United States, and indeed the Western world, is bitterly divided on the issues of the right to die and euthanasia. Polls reported in 2004 indicated that between four and 10 percent of physicians helped to end a terminally ill patient's life at some time, even though such acts are against the law. Legislators, judges, and ordinary citizens have become embroiled in the passionate battle over the "right to die." Meanwhile, health care professionals, philosophers and religious leaders, and disabled or severely ill people and their families continue to debate whether, and under what...