The verdict has finally come out for two teenage males accused of raping a 16-year-old girl in Steubenville, Ohio. Ma'lik Richmond and Trent Mays were found guilty and must serve up to one and two years in the state juvenile system respectively.

From Steubenville, Ohio to New Delhi, India, we seem to be living in a world where gender based violence is a common human abuse. "Women worldwide ages 15 through 44 are more likely to die or be maimed because of male violence than because of cancer, malaria, war and traffic accidents combined," writes Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for the New York Times. He continues by stating that "Americans watched the events after the Delhi gang rape with a whiff of condescension at the barbarity there, but domestic violence and sex trafficking remain a vast problem across the United States."

Did you know that international laws dictate the rules of the game when it comes to selling bananas and iPods, but not grenade launchers and AK-47s?

It’s crazy but true. Fortunately, a solution is at hand. Negotiators at the United Nations will soon wrap up a global Arms Trade Treaty that will establish much-needed rules to prevent selling arms to human rights violators.

Every year, more than 500,000 people around the world are killed as a result of armed violence. Firearms are used in armed conflicts and to carry out human rights violations, including genocide, gang rape, and the practice of forcing children into combat as underaged soldiers.

There are about 250,000 child soldiers.

Roughly 60 percent of documented human rights violations involve the use of small arms (such as rifles and machine guns) and light weapons (such as grenade launchers and shoulder-fired missiles). In fact, more human rights abuses are committed with small arms than with any other category of weapon.

Last week a New York Times article announced that during the State of the Union, Obama was going to call for drastically reducing our nuclear weapons stock pile.

Yet the state of the union came and nothing was said on the matter.

Lately, tensions with Russia have begun to fray around the edges. Vladimir Putin refuses to renew the Dunn-Lugar Treaty, the Russian Parliament banned Russian adoptions to American parents, and the Russians have expressed their great displeasure of the United States’ involvement in their energy sector. Perhaps this is all why Obama chose instead not to discuss the fragile issue during one of his most public speeches.

The topic of drone strikes has been popular conversation topic and has a large impact on national security.  "The drone war is a shadow war," states Rosa Brooks, a Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and Georgetown University law professor, who also served as a Counselor to Under Secretary of Defence for Policy Michele Flournoy at the U.S. Department of Defense. In her article, "Death by Loophole," Brooks continues by stating that the CIA and the White House has had little to no acknowledgement about their involvement in 'targeted killings' around the world.  Today, we do not know exactly how many drone strikes have been launched or exactly where these 'targeted killings' have taken place.

Under what circumstances can the United States' government use droids?

The uses of drones have been very important to the United States military. They are able to "provide 24-hour patrols over hotspots, gather intelligence by pulling in millions of terabytes of data and hours of video feeds and they can also launch precisely targeted airstrikes without putting a U.S. pilot at risk." Overall, drones have a wide variety of uses, both good and bad.