Welcome to Sultan's Blog

Hi! If you’ve stumbled upon this page by accident, press Alt + left arrow (or Cmd + [ on Mac) if you’re here on purpose. Welcome to my first blog! I’m Sultan Altikriti, a postdoc at the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center here at Rutgers.

I study crime, with a focus on violence and firearms. I’m especially interested in how people’s life experiences shape their thinking and violent behavior. I (try to) emphasize strong theory and sound causal relationships in my research. To do that, I lean on my background in life-course criminology, behavioral decision-making, and longitudinal methods.

Some of my recent work looks at how illegal gun carrying links other risk factors to gun violence, and how those links might be interrupted. This approach offers an alternative perspective on gun violence where gun carrying is not treated as just another variable, but a potential mechanism through which broader risks are linked to gun violence. Here, I found that there is a set of risk factors that influence someone to illegally carry a firearm, while another set of risk factors predicts whether they engage in gun violence. In this work, I highlight that different intervention strategies are appropriate depending on the level of risk and whether someone already carries guns.

Some of my ongoing projects expand on my recent work by looking at the role of psychological and environmental risk factors in amplifying the risk of gun violence. These include looking at how personality characteristics like psychopathy and thrill-seeking can exacerbate the effect of other risk factors on gun violence outcomes.

Through my work, I hope to contribute to our understanding of violent behavior and gun violence by refining the theories we use to explain why violence happens.

Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to read about my research!