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Malia Politzer is the executive editor of piqd.com, and an award-winning long-form journalist based out of Spain. She specializes in reporting on migration, international development, human rights issues and investigative reporting.
Originally from California, she's lived in China, Spain, Mexico and India, and reported from various countries in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Her primary beats relate to immigration, economics and international development. She has published articles in Huffington Post Highline, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue India, Mint, Far Eastern Economic Review, Foreign Policy, Reason Magazine, and the Phoenix New Times. She is also a regular contributor to Devex.
Her Huffington Post Highline series, "The 21st Century Gold Rush" won awards from the National Association of Magazine Editors, Overseas Press Club, and American Society of Newspaper Editors. She's also won multiple awards for feature writing in India and the United States.
Her reporting has been supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, The Institute For Current World Affairs, and the Global Migration Grant.
Degrees include a BA from Hampshire College and MS from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where was a Stabile Fellow at the Center for Investigative Journalism.
How Defective Guns Became The Only Product In The US That Can't Be Recalled
This Bloomberg Businessweek article is a stunner. It opens with a dramatic (and true) scene, in which a 28-year old man is shot in the femoral artery when the gun in his holster spontaneously goes off. He dies.
His family, all gun owners, don’t understand how the gun could have gone off by itself, and decide to investigate. What they find is simply unbelievable: The Consumer Product Safety Commission — the US government department tasked with consumer protection — has the power to recall and repair thousands of things — from cribs and teddybears, to cars and toasters. The one product they can’t touch? You guessed it. Guns.
Not only that, but they don’t even have the power to force gunmakers to warn consumers when the guns are defective! The family also discovered a host of other lawsuits against the company (Taurus International Manufacturing Inc) that manufactured the defective gun — all of them related to avoidable injuries and deaths from misfiring guns.
How this could have happened is described in a fascinating and lengthy read, that goes back to the origins of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a politician backed by the gun-rights lobby group National Rifle Association (NRA), and cozy business connections between Taurus and the NRA.
If you want to get mad, read this article. In fact, read it anyway.
