Now that the controversy over Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s burial is over, it is time to move on to matters far more critical to our safety and security than where to put a dead body. In the wake of the Marathon bombings, law enforcement and security specialists have had to consider other events or locations -- sporting events and various gatherings of large crowds -- that could serve as attractive targets for terrorists.

One critical site that immediately comes to mind for me and many of my South End neighbors does not involve a crowd, but could threaten the lives of thousands, if not millions, should it be struck by a terrorist attack: the Boston University Biolab on Albany Street, just off of the Southeast Expressway.

This high-tech facility was constructed with support from the National Institute of Health to conduct Level-4 biological research on deadly pathogens like SARS and Ebola. While work with less dangerous infectious diseases has been ongoing for some time, push back from the neighboring communities has delayed the plan to upgrade to the highest security-level activity.

Strategically, the biolab opposition got off on the wrong path by focusing too heavily on the issue of race and class. Even though the closest neighborhoods are heavily minority, should human error or malicious acts cause toxic agents to be released, many more than those living or working in the few blocks of Roxbury and the South End surrounding the location would be affected and potentially placed under quarantine. Airborne germs would certainly not respect boundaries between the South End/Roxbury and Back Bay/Beacon Hill. The radius of impact could be as wide as five miles, which would include most of the city, its transportation hubs and medical facilities. Who would come to the rescue if all the local first responders are under lock down?

Earlier this week I published an opinion column in USA Today about how the controversy over where to bury – or if to bury – the corpse of a suspected terrorist had turned “Boston Strong” into “Boston Wrong.” The pride I had felt as a native Bostonian for the heroism demonstrated by so many public officials and ordinarily citizens after the marathon bombings was being eclipsed by shame and embarrassment for those who refuse to treat a dead body as a dead issue.

As I should have expected, the venom and vulgarity directed at the deceased Tsarnaev brother were redirected my way as soon as my words appeared in print. Just because I supported the fundamental decency of a burial, I was supposedly in support of the reprehensible act that the deceased had allegedly committed in life. That Tamerlan Tsarnaev behaved inhumanely apparently meant that we Bostonians had to act in kind -- in a manner that is anything but kind. My expression of compassion arguing that the family be allowed to grieve without protestors chanting for desecration of the remains was met with all sorts of ugliness and profanity, veiled threats and personal attacks, even messages of denunciation sent to my colleagues and co-workers.

Notwithstanding my position on the matter, I do respect the right for anyone to resist and resent the idea of having Tsarnaev’s body buried in our land. It is the disgraceful way in which they demonstrate their point of view that offends me.

By all accounts, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the younger of two brothers suspected of having perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombings, was a good kid, a bright young man and hardly the type of angry malcontent you'd expect of a terrorist. He graduated from the prestigious Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, where he starred on the varsity wrestling team; was named student-athlete of the month in his senior year; and earned a $2,500 scholarship from the city of Cambridge toward his tuition at University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

Dzhokhar's older brother, Tamerlan, seems to have had a far less glowing past. The 26-year-old community college dropout had been arrested on charges of domestic violence. In recent years, according to relatives, he had grown increasingly religious, drawn to a more observant Islam and possibly anti-American ideology. By his own account, Tamerlan had felt friendless here in America. Despite all this, Tamerlan showed little indication of having the potential or the desire to commit an extreme act of mass violence, and was cleared in an FBI investigation two years ago. Friends and neighbors were unconcerned.

Given their fairly unremarkable lifestyles and reputations, why would the Tsarnaev brothers have allegedly engaged in such diabolical crimes? How could these young men have heartlessly murdered and maimed spectators at the Boston Marathon and days later fatally shot an MIT police officer?

How many times and from how many different camera angles are we to view yesterday’s finish-line blasts? Sure, the local media are all competing for viewers with their marathon coverage of the marathon bombings. But their obsessive highlighting of the moments of terror, rather that the response and recovery, has grown excessive.

It is important and helpful that the local television stations have switched to non-stop reporting of our local tragedy. We want to understand what happened and learn of the latest developments surrounding the investigation. We need to know how the city -- and city services -- are adjusting to the disruption in our normal routine. We watch with prayer hoping that the critically injured survive rather than add to the death toll. We also want to know what we can do to help.

The Boston Athletic Association (BAA) announced on Thursday that it will honor the victims of the Newtown, Conn. shooting spree in this year’s running of the Boston Marathon. Apparently, this isn’t just another one of the countless sporting events that have respectfully remembered the innocent lives lost in that dreadful massacre. According the BAA president, the marathon carries “special significance” in that the 26 miles of the race course will serve as a tribute to each of the 26 victims (ignoring the final one-fifth mile leg of the 26.2 mile race).

Although well-intentioned, those at the BAA and countless other Americans are wrong every time they say that 26 were murdered by Adam Lanza. Sure, 26 were killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. But the Newtown shooting spree included 27 homicide victims, if you include, as you should, Nancy Lanza who was fatally shot by her son prior to his assault on the nearby school.

If one thing is absolutely predictable about mass shootings, it is that they will spark debate over gun control. In the wake of massacres in Newton, Conn., Aurora, Colo., and elsewhere, public officials and private citizens alike are insisting that we must find a way to keep guns away from our most dangerous element, yet are blinded by passion and anger from confronting the practical limitations.

Most mass murderers do not have criminal records or a history of psychiatric hospitalization. They would not be disqualified from purchasing their weapons legally.

The suspension of a 5-year-old Hopkinton kindergartener for bringing his souvenir toy gun to school may seem like an utterly absurd over-response. Actually, it is the latest in long list of mindless applications of the zero tolerance school policy to relatively innocuous behaviors.

Just weeks ago, a 7-year-old Maryland boy was suspended after he nibbled away at his breakfast pastry until it was left shaped like a gun. A Colorado girl, who mistakenly grabbed her mother’s lunch bag from the kitchen counter while rushing off to school, was punished after she learned of her error and volunteered the small paring knife that her mother had packed for slicing an apple. Ignorance was no excuse.

Have you ever noticed that people who witness and survive mass shootings often describe the gunmen as having been extremely relaxed and calm during their rampage? This level of composure stems from the detailed planning that is typical of these massacres -- planning that includes where and when to attack as well as with what weapons. Strategizing prepares them logistically and psychologically for "warfare."

In contrast, the rest of us are taken by surprise and respond frantically. A sudden and wild shootout involving the assailant and citizens armed with concealed weapons would potentially catch countless innocent victims in the crossfire.

The effectiveness of concealed-carry laws in deterring mass murder is actually an empirical question, one that has been examined by criminologist Grant Duwe and his colleagues. Using fairly sophisticated analytic techniques, they assessed the extent to which various "right-to-carry" laws in 25 states across the country were associated with any change in the incidence of public mass shootings in the years from 1977 through 1999. Based on their estimates, the impact of these laws was negligible, neither encouraging nor discouraging mass murder.

It comes as no surprise that Nathaniel Fujita has been found guilty of murdering Lauren Astley. The physical evidence was overwhelming and, besides, the defense never contested that the young man had killed his former girlfriend.

The defendant’s only available strategy was to attempt the insanity defense, a defense that had almost no chance of succeeding. Not only are successful insanity claims exceptionally rare -- particularly in high-profile murder cases like this one, but the lack of prior and persistent psychiatric history was no small hurdle to overcome. Most successful insanity claims come through a plea agreement between the prosecution and the defense, and there would be no such arrangement possible in this closely watched case.

Many people with whom I’ve discussed this trial expressed a certain degree of sympathy for Fujita (although, of course, not anywhere as profound as the sentiment for Astley’s family). After all, who has not experienced the devastation of lost love? And when you’re young, it can feel absolutely catastrophic. I heard from many folks who hoped that the pursuit of justice for Astley could be tempered with compassion for Fujita.

Today’s front page story from Brian MacQuarrie about trends in gun crime in Massachusetts raises some important questions about the efficacy of gun control. Indeed, how can a state, like Massachusetts, witness such a disturbing surge in gun homicide and other firearms-related crimes after enacting one of the nation’s strictest gun control packages? On the other hand, if the situation has grown so dire, how is it that the Commonwealth can still lay claim to having the second lowest gun fatality rate in the nation? The answers to these (and perhaps other) questions come from taking a broader view of the relevant statistics.

Based on the FBI data shown below, it is quite true that homicides with a firearm have nearly doubled since the 1998 gun control package. What makes the increase even more striking is that the volume of homicides involving all other weapons remained fairly level over these same years.

The weekend before last, a 15-year boy allegedly murdered his parents and three siblings at the family home outside of Albuquerque, N.M. Should we add it to the list of recent mass shootings about which all of America is talking? Of course we should, although according to at least one influential news source it shouldn’t be a part of the discussion.

In the ongoing public debate over the causes and solutions to mass shootings, the overwhelming consensus is that mass shootings are on the rise. President Obama mentioned recent deadly rampages while releasing his multi-faceted gun reform proposal. And although former President Bill Clinton may have exaggerated in suggesting that half of all mass killings in the United States have occurred since the 2005 expiration of the Federal assault weapon ban, many Americans sense that these incidents have become much more frequent.

Of course, perceptions are not always in line with reality, and they are more strongly influenced by recent events than by those that occurred well in the past. Given the widely-publicized and exceptionally dreadful mass shootings in Colorado last summer and in Connecticut last month, it is rather easy to believe that mass murder, particularly those involving firearms, is a growing menace. Yet the growing menace lies more in our fears than in the facts.

It often comes as a surprise to many folks to learn that Massachusetts, despite its unearned reputation for being soft on crime, is one of the harshest states in the nation when it comes to punishing juvenile murderers. Unlike most states, which allow some flexibility in how to prosecute kids who kill or how long to incarcerate them if convicted, Massachusetts has for the past two decades had only one approach for those as young as 14 charged with first degree murder: prosecution as an adult and a life sentence without parole, if convicted. Efforts in recent years to reform the juvenile murder statute have failed as many of our lawmakers worry about the political fallout from moderating punishments.

At this point, now that the U.S. Supreme Court has determined mandatory life without parole eligibility for juveniles to be unconstitutional, Massachusetts is one of many states that have no choice but to re-examine sentencing policies. The only question will be whether we comply with the Supreme Court mandate minimally be replacing life without parole by extremely long prison terms or we adopt a more enlightened, sensible and flexible approach that reflects the spirit of the Court decision.

Last Saturday night, a 15-year boy allegedly murdered his parents and three siblings at the family home outside of Albuquerque, N.M. Should we add it to the list of recent mass shootings about which all of America is talking? Of course we should, although according to at least one influential news source it shouldn’t be a part of the discussion.

In the ongoing public debate over the causes and solutions to mass shootings, the overwhelming consensus is that mass shootings are on the rise. President Obama mentioned recent deadly rampages while releasing his multi-faceted gun reform proposal. And although former President Bill Clinton may have exaggerated in suggesting that half of all mass killings in the United States have occurred since the 2005 expiration of the Federal assault weapon ban, many Americans sense that these incidents have become much more frequent.

Of course, perceptions are not always in line with reality, and they are more strongly influenced by recent events than by those that occurred well in the past. Given the widely-publicized and exceptionally dreadful mass shootings in Colorado last summer and in Connecticut last month, it is rather easy to believe that mass murder, particularly those involving firearms, is a growing menace. Yet the growing menace lies more in our fears than in the facts.

With the holiday break ending, millions of youngsters will be returning to the classroom. Will they do so fearful that an incident like the Sandy Hook shooting might happen in their school? Will parents worry as they watch their children climb aboard the yellow school bus that they might not return safe and sound at the end of the day?

The recent massacre in Newtown, Conn. has put the issue of school safety center stage in the public and political discourse. Notwithstanding the fact that for school-aged children, the risk of serious violence while at school is significantly lower than at other times and at other places, the enormity of the carnage at the Sandy Hook compels us to think long and hard about school security.

After days of suspense wondering how the NRA would, as promised, contribute to the growing array of recommendations for enhancing school safety, we have its simple solution. Wayne LaPierre, Executive Director of the NRA, has suggested that we equip every school in America -- schools of every size, level, and type -- with an armed guard, someone who would be prepared to ward off any dangerous intruder.

Never mind that most school homicides are perpetrated by insiders, typically disgruntled students not deranged strangers. Never mind that thousands of schools already have sworn police officers on site.

Even before the death toll in last Friday’s school massacre in Newtown, Conn., was determined, politicians, pundits, and professors of varied disciplines were all over the news, pushing their proposals for change. Some talked about the role of guns, others about mental-health services, and still more about the need for better security in schools and other public places. Whatever their agenda and the passion behind it, those advocates made certain explicit or implied assumptions about patterns in mass murder and the profile of the assailants. Unfortunately, those assumptions do not always align with the facts.

In the wake of Friday’s massacre at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn., many Americans, some living near the crime site and others located hundreds of miles away, have described a sense of helplessness.

Understandably, people want and need to believe there are constructive measures that can make us and especially our children safer -- specific policies, procedures or programs that can prevent this kind of tragedy from recurring elsewhere, including their own local community. Parents, in particular, are left imagining the incredible pain that the families in Newtown must endure.

So what indeed can be done? What ideas have surfaced in the aftermath of this senseless slaughter, and what are their prospects for making a significant difference?

I have grown accustomed to the massive media attention and frantic search for breaking news developments associated with mass murder. However, the seemingly insatiable need for some journalists to create a context for tragedy is mystifying.

Barely two hours after Tuesday's shooting at a Portland, Oregon shopping mall, I received several calls from points far west inquiring whether mass shootings were on the rise. Following high profile massacres in Aurora, Colorado and Seattle, Washington earlier this year, reporters and news editors wanted to confirm their perceptions with reality. They also wanted to know wether the Oregon shooter may have been modeling the Colorado theater massacre.

I assured all those who asked that such tragedies we not a sign of an upward trajectory. Rather, our collective memories seem to forget or move past other anxious times when mass shootings have clustered in time, for the most part out of sheer coincidence. Although there have been cases in which mass gunmen have derived inspiration from others who preceded them, and perhaps wanted a share of the notoriety that follows, the impact of copycatting is often overstated.

Curiously, the response from those who called about such a trend was more disappointment than relief. Innocent people were killed senselessly, and that wouldn't be any worse or better were it part of an emerging pattern.

Then, of course, came the Newtown, Connecticut shooting which claimed that lives of more than two dozen victims, mostly young children. As the tragedy was unfolding and before any perpetrator or motive was identified, scores of journalists, from all forms of media and from here and abroad were phoning to ask whether this was the worst school shooting in history. It didn't matter that deadlier episodes had happened overseas (the 2004 school siege in Russia), at a college setting (Virginia Tech in 2007) or involving means other than gunfire (the 1927 school explosion in Bath, Michigan), reporters were eager to declare the Sandy Hook massacre as some type a new record.

There isn't a Hall of Fame for criminals. There is no purpose in looking for record-setting. Does the pain and suffering associated with the Sandy Hook school shooting change in anyway if it is the largest? Would that make it any more important? I trust I need not answer these rhetorical questions.

A new report released this week by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) documents a long-term decline in intimate partner violence. Specifically, according to the BJS analysis, the overall rate of violence involving spouses, former spouses and boyfriends/girlfriends declined by 64% nationally from 1994 to 2010. This is surely welcomed news for victim advocates and service providers who have long struggled to increase awareness of the plight of women and sometime men who are trapped in an abusive relationship.

Note, however, that the BJS figures arise from the agency’s annual household survey of personal victimization. Thus, homicide -- the most serious form of relationship violence and the type that tends to generate the most disturbing headlines -- is excluded from the BJS definition of intimate-partner violence.

This is not to suggest, of course, that BJS is unconcerned about violence that reaches lethal proportions. However, the only source of information on homicide having this level of specificity comes from the Supplementary Homicide Reporting program of the FBI, a different division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

So how do trends in lethal violence among intimate partners compare to those pertaining to non-lethal forms of aggression? The good news is that episodes in which an intimate-partner relationship turns deadly have also grown fewer in number over the past three decades, despite the all-too-frequent cases where cupid’s arrow is laced with poison. As shown in the figure below, the number of intimate partner homicides has dropped from nearly 3,500 in 1980 to about 2,000 in 2010.

It has been nearly two years since 24-year-old Jared Lee Loughner opened fire upon a crowded plaza in Tucson, killing six and wounding several others, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Yet, after all the legal maneuvering, Loughner received sentence that guarantees he will never again walk free.

Mass murderers like Loughner or Winchester's Thomas Mortimer deserve nothing less than life imprisonment given the enormity of their crimes. While absolutely fair and appropriate for such atrocities, there are many other offenders, particularly here in Massachusetts, who receive the very same fate but who arguably deserve something less extreme.

In Massachusetts all defendants convicted of first degree murder are sent away to prison for life without the possibility of parole, regardless of any mitigating circumstances surrounding the offense or the offender. By contrast, two dozen states having life without parole on the books include it among a group of alternative sentences depending on the circumstances of the offense and the offender.

"Violent crimes jump unexpectedly," read the headline of a Page 2 news brief in today’s Boston Globe. The attention-grabber sounds as scary as it is wrong -- wrong on two counts. Not only is it rather misleading to call the latest trend in violent crime victimization a jump, but the increase that did occur was hardly surprising.

The following chart showing the rate of violent crime over the past two decades based on the annual survey of tens of thousands of households nationwide places the statistical report in the proper context. Sure, violent crime was up in 2011 over 2010, but it remained lower than every other year since the early 1990s. The rate of violent crime victimization in 2011 was actually the second best in recent history; but with 2010 being the best, the one year trend from 2010 to 2011 appeared worrisome – an 18 percent surge in violent crime.

While growing up in this area, I was a big fan of AM talk shows. Of course, talk radio was quite a bit different a half-century ago, both in content and style.

Back then, in the 1960s, I was an avid listener of Paul Benzaquin, Jerry Williams and Steve Fredericks, three stars of the airwaves who truly put the “master” in the role of talk-master. Benzaquin and Williams were honored by induction into the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame, and Fredericks likely would have been nominated had he not moved back to his hometown of Philadelphia where he became a renowned sport announcer.

I hardly ever listen to talk shows anymore. It is not just the shift from liberal ideas to ultra right-wing thinking that I dislike. It is more the anger and vitriol that has turned me and my radio off to squawk shows.

The third time will be anything but a charm for a 48-year-old Texas inmate who will return to the state’s execution chamber after twice before coming within hours of getting the needle. Cleve Foster, a former army recruiter who was convicted a decade ago of murdering a Ft. Worth woman, will repeat today a bizarre death ritual that has become all too familiar.

One again, Foster will be escorted by van the hour-long trip from his prison cell in West Livingston to the lethal injection chamber in Huntsville. Once again he will sit in silent solitude awaiting his fate and praying that the U.S. Supreme Court will intercede as it had twice before. Once again he will be served a last meal, whether or not justice will be served afterwards. Only this time, Foster will not have his choice of menu, as this long-practice gesture of mercy was banned last year by order of Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

If the death sentence is indeed carried out today, Foster will also be given his opportunity for some final words before poison is injected into his veins. Some condemned prisoners take this occasion to add insults to injury, while others invoke their right to remain silent. Sometimes inmates confess to their crimes, if only as a last gasp attempt to purge their conscience or offer some small measure of solace to the surviving victims. And, of course, many use the occasion to protest their innocence right down to the bitter end, as Foster will likely do.

On stage in front of thousands of delighted delegates to the DNC in Charlotte, Governor Deval Patrick detailed the many ways in which his predecessor in the corner office on Beacon Hill failed the citizens of Massachusetts. And there was much to Governor Mitt Romney's record for Patrick to work with.

Never mind Mitt Romney’s outrageous attempts to abuse the Commonwealth as the butt of his anti-liberal barbs, even while still holding the state’s highest elective office, as he toured the country garnering momentum for his eventual run for the Presidency. According to Patrick, Mitt Romney left the Commonwealth in worse shape than when he assumed the leadership post four years earlier. Not only did Romney raise fees and cut education, but Massachusetts ranked 47th in job creation during his term as Governor.

There is, however, one failure to Romney’s administration -- and a significant one according to his own assessment -- for which we in Massachusetts are fortunate, at least financially. And that is Romney’s unsuccessful bid to restore capital punishment in Massachusetts.

Yesterday’s lethal shooting by the Boston Police of an armed man in the South End (or Back Bay by some people’s definition) reflects a curious pattern that has emerged over the past decade. Even while crime rates have remained relatively level, the number of felons or suspects killed by the police in America has risen fairly steadily (see figure below). Although not quite as frequent as in the violence-peak years of the early 1990s, since 2000, the incidence of justifiable homicides, as they are classified, of felons/suspects by the police has grown nationally by about one-third, from approximately 300 to 400 per year.