Terms of Use

Effective November 8, 2018

Welcome to the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research website. These Terms of Use ("Terms") govern and provide important information about your use of www.ncgvr.org and related content, services, features, and applications (the "website"). "The collaborative" means and refers to the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research.

If you visit this site, you accept these conditions. Please read them carefully. The collaborative may change, add, or remove any part of these Terms or any part of the website. In such a case, the collaborative will post such changes on the website.

If any future changes are unacceptable to you, you should discontinue using the website. Your continued use of the website now, or following the posting of notice of any such changes, will indicate your acceptance of these Terms as may be amended from time to time.

Privacy

Please review our Privacy Policy, which also governs your visit to the collaborative's website, to understand our practices.

Electronic Communications

When you visit this site and send emails to us, you consent to receive communications from us either by email if you have provided us with your email address, or by notice posted on the website, as determined by us in our sole discretion. You agree that any requirement that a notice, disclosure, agreement or other communication be sent to you by us in writing is satisfied by such electronic communication. We are not responsible for any automatic filtering you or your network provider may apply to communications we send to an email address that you provide to us.

All content included on this site, such as text, graphics, logos, button icons, images, audio clips, documents, digital downloads, and data sets, is the property of the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research or its content suppliers and protected by United States and international copyright laws. The compilation of all content on this site is the exclusive property of the collaborative unless otherwise noted and protected by U.S. and international copyright laws. All software used on this site is the property of the collaborative or its software suppliers and protected by United States and international copyright laws.

Availability of Website

While the collaborative will make reasonable efforts to ensure that the website is available at all times, the collaborative does not guarantee, represent, or warrant that provision of the website will be uninterrupted or error-free, and the collaborative does not guarantee that users will be able to access or use all of the features at all times.

The collaborative may change, suspend, or discontinue any (or all) aspects of the website at any time, including the availability of any related feature or project. The collaborative may also impose limits on the use of or access to certain features or portions of the website, or restrict your access to any part, or all, of the website, in all cases without notice or liability.

License and Site Access

The National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research grants you a limited license to access and make personal use of this site and not to download (other than page caching) or modify it, or any portion of it, except with express written consent of the collaborative. This license does not include any resale or commercial use of this site or its contents; any collection and use of any product listings, descriptions, or prices; any derivative use of this site or its contents; any downloading or copying of account information for the benefit of a third-party; or any use of data mining, robots, or similar data gathering and extraction tools.

This site or any portion of this site may not be reproduced, duplicated, copied, sold, resold, visited, or otherwise exploited for any commercial purpose without express written consent of the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research. You may not frame or utilize framing techniques to enclose any trademark, logo, or other proprietary information (including images, text, page layout, or form) of the collaborative and our affiliates without express written consent. You may not use any meta tags or any other “hidden text” utilizing the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research's name or logos without the express written consent of the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research. Any unauthorized use terminates the permission or license granted by the collaborative. You are granted a limited, revocable, and nonexclusive right to create hyperlinks to the home page or other pages of the collaborative website so long as any links do not portray the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research, its affiliates, or their products or services in a false, misleading, derogatory, or otherwise offensive manner. You may not use any of the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research's logos or other proprietary graphics as part of the link without express written permission.

Certain content, components, or features of the website may include materials from third parties and/or hyperlinks to other websites, resources, or content. Because the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research may have no control over such third party sites and/or materials, you acknowledge and agree that the collaborative is not responsible for the availability of such sites or resources, does not endorse or warrant the accuracy of any such sites or resources, and shall in no way be liable or responsible for any content, advertising, products, or materials on or available from such sites or resources. You further acknowledge and agree that the collaborative shall not be responsible or liable in any way for any damages you incur or allege to have incurred, either directly or indirectly, as a result of your use and/or reliance upon any such content, advertising, products, or materials on or available from such sites or resources.

Content and Intellectual Property

Visitors may submit feedback such as suggestions, ideas, comments, or other information concerning website content. In the course of operating this site, the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research may also provide opportunities to interact with this site, participate in a public forum or post comments to promote the free exchange of ideas. By submitting material here you accept the responsibility to follow these simple rules:

  1. content may not infringe on intellectual property rights, or be otherwise injurious to third parties
  2. content may not consist of or contain software viruses, political campaigning, commercial solicitation, chain letters, mass mailings, or any form of "spam"
  3. no abusive, defamatory, misleading or discriminatory language
  4. where you encounter open forums on the site, comments must remain on topic and perspectives expressed should be grounded in a factual basis.

If you do not follow these rules, your comment will be subject to removal without notice. The collaborative has the right but not the obligation to monitor and edit or remove any activity or content. The collaborative takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any content submitted by you or any third party.

This site or any portion of this site may not be reproduced, duplicated, copied, sold or otherwise exploited for any commercial purpose without express written consent.

Acceptable Use Policy Guidelines

Your use of the website must conform to the requirements of the law, respect for the rights of other website users and third parties, and current standards for online participation and usage— this includes (but is not limited to) following the rules of any Internet Service Provider, any other online services, these Terms, and all applicable laws.

The collaborative reserves the right to terminate or restrict your access to the website at any time, with or without cause for any reason. Events that are likely to trigger such measures by the collaborative include, but are not limited to, any breach of these Terms by you, your infringement of the collaborative's or others' intellectual property, or any other circumstances which, in the collaborative's sole discretion, merit such measures.

Inappropriate conduct falls into a number of categories. The more commonly understood categories are discussed below, although this list is not exclusive.

Illegal, Tortious, and Prohibited Conduct

The website may be used only for lawful and proper purposes. Posting, transmitting, promoting, using, distributing, or storing content that could subject the collaborative or other website users to any legal liability, whether in tort or otherwise, or that is in violation of any applicable law or regulation, or is otherwise contrary to commonly accepted community standards, is prohibited, including information and material protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret, nondisclosure or confidentiality agreements, or other intellectual property rights, and material that is obscene, defamatory, constitutes a threat, or violates export control laws.

Examples of prohibited conduct are:

  • Pretending to be anyone you are not—you may not impersonate or misrepresent yourself as another person (including celebrities), another user, an the collaborative employee, or a civic or government leader;
  • Using false statements to get, or to attempt to get, private information from other website or Internet users;
  • Engaging in copyright infringement or other intellectual property infringement, or disclosing trade secret or confidential information in violation of a confidentiality or nondisclosure agreement;
  • Posting or communicating obscene content;
  • Planning illegal activity, such as building a bomb or counterfeiting money;
  • Advertising a lottery, ammunition, firearms, tobacco, alcohol, illegal drugs, or drug-related paraphernalia;
  • Using any "deep-link", "page-scrape", "robot", "spider" or other automatic device, program, algorithm or methodology, or any similar or equivalent manual process, to access, acquire, copy or monitor any portion of the website;
  • Probing, scanning, or testing the vulnerability of the website or any network connected to the website;
  • Reverse look-up or tracing (including attempted tracing) of any information on any other user of or visitor to the website;
  • Taking any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on the infrastructure of the website;
  • Exploiting the website, or any service or information made available or offered by or through the website, in any way where the purpose or effect is to reveal any information, including but not limited to personal identification or information, other than your own information.

The collaborative reserves the right to cooperate with law enforcement authorities, including complying with warrants, court orders, and subpoenas. In addition, the collaborative reserves the right to comply with any civil court orders and/or subpoenas. If the collaborative decides to investigate or resolve possible misuse involving you or anything you do on or with the website, the collaborative is entitled, except to the extent prohibited by applicable law, to disclose any information about you in the collaborative's possession in connection with your use of the website and anything you do with the website to law enforcement or other government officials, as the collaborative in its sole discretion believes to be necessary or appropriate. By your acceptance of these Terms and your use of the website, you authorize the collaborative to take any such actions.

Objectionable Conduct and Content

To the extent the website may allow a user to in any way supply or post content to the website, the collaborative reserves the right to remove content if the collaborative becomes aware of any content that, in the collaborative's judgment, does not conform to these Terms. The collaborative may warn you about the violation of these Terms, but we reserve the right not to do so. At all times, the collaborative reserves the right to terminate or restrict, with or without notice, access to or use of the website for violation of these Terms.

Indemnity and Waiver

As a user of the website, you agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless the collaborative, its directors, officers, employees, and agents, and each of their affiliates, from and against any and all claims, losses, liabilities, damages, expenses, and costs (including reasonable attorneys' fees and court costs) made by any third party ("Claims") due to or arising out of your acts or omissions, including Claims arising out of your use of the website; your submission, posting, or transmission of content on the website; or your violation of these Terms.

You further agree (to the extent permitted by applicable law) to waive any claims you may have against the collaborative, hold the collaborative harmless, and indemnify the collaborative with respect to any claims relating to any action taken by the collaborative as part of its investigation of a suspected violation of these Terms or as a result of its finding or decision that a violation of these Terms has occurred. This means that you cannot sue the collaborative or recover any damages whatsoever from the collaborative as a result of its decision to remove material from the website, to warn you, to suspend or terminate your access to the website, or to take any other action during the investigation of a suspected violation or as a result of the collaborative's conclusion that a violation of these Terms has occurred. These waiver and indemnity provisions apply to all violations described in or contemplated by these Terms.

Disclaimer of Warranties and Liability Limitations

You expressly agree that your use of, or inability to use, the website is at undertaken your sole risk. The website is provided "as is" and "as available" for your use, without warranties of any kind, either express or implied, including all implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement.

The collaborative does not guarantee that any content, information, software, or other material accessible through the website will be error-free, complete or accurate, or free of viruses or other harmful components.

In no case shall the collaborative, its subsidiaries, directors, officers, employees, affiliates, agents, partners, licensors, or contractors be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or exemplary damages including, but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, goodwill, use, data, cost of procurement of substitute goods or services, or other intangible losses (even if the collaborative has been advised of the possibility of such damages), resulting from: (i) the use or inability to use the website; (ii) any changes made to the website or any temporary or permanent cessation of the website or any part thereof; (iii) the unauthorized access to or alteration of your transmissions or data; (iv) the deletion of, corruption of, or failure to store and/or send or receive your transmissions or data on or through the website; (v) statements or conduct of any third party on the website; and (vi) any other matter relating to the website. The collaborative does not endorse, warrant, or guarantee any third-party project or service offered through the website and will not be a party to or in any way be responsible for monitoring any transaction between you and any third parties through the website. You hereby release the collaborative from any and all obligations, liability, and claims in excess of these liability limitations.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of liability for incidental or consequential damages. As such, to the extent such exclusions or limitations are specifically prohibited by applicable law, some of the exclusions or limitations set forth below may not apply to you.

If any part of these Terms is held invalid or unenforceable, that portion shall be construed in a manner consistent with applicable law to reflect, as nearly as possible, the original intentions of the parties, and the remaining portions shall remain in full force and effect. Any claim or cause of action by you arising out of or related to use of the website or these Terms must be filed within one (1) year after such claim or cause of action arose or be forever barred. Except as required by applicable non-U.S. local or national law, the laws of the State of Texas, United States of America, excluding its conflicts of law rules, govern these Terms and your use of the website. Your conduct and use of the website may be subject to other local, state, national (U.S. and non-U.S.), and international laws. You expressly agree that exclusive jurisdiction for any claim or dispute with the collaborative regarding the website or relating to the Terms shall be brought and/or reside exclusively in either the federal or state courts for Harris County, Texas. You further agree and expressly consent to the exercise of personal jurisdiction in the Texas courts in connection with any such dispute, including any claim involving the collaborative or its affiliates, subsidiaries, employees, contractors, officers, or directors.

Our Address

The National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research is administered by RAND Corporation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institution, that develops targeted Requests for Research Proposals at the direction of an independent Research Advisory Committee.

National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research
1776 Main Street
Santa Monica, California 90401-3208
feedback-ncgvr@rand.org