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Though he’s sold a scant 500 of them, Defender-DNA inventor Bob Smith is optimistic about his new product. “I get so excited when I look at it now,” he says. “It could go so far it’s unreal.” A standard personal alarm supplemented by an auto-injecting needle, the device is supposed to collect a DNA sample from one’s would-be attacker. Currently, such a sample would be useful only if the assailant were one of the 141,600 violent or sex offenders cataloged in the FBI’s National DNA Index System, or one of the approximately 260,000 in state databases. But many politicians and police departments across the country advocate adding DNA samples of nonviolent criminals to their local databases; New York City police commissioner Howard Safir would like to take a sample from everyone who is merely arrested. Widening the pool even more, New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani recently said he favors obtaining the genetic fingerprints of all the city’s newborns. Smith says his product is the defense of the future.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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