Firearm Violence Prevention in Peril: A Call to Defend Our Public Safety Infrastructure

Firearm-related harm in the United States—including homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings—has shown meaningful signs of decline in recent years. Roughly 80% of homicides in the United States involve a firearm.¹ In 2024 alone, the national homicide rate fell by more than 16%, marking one of the most significant single-year declines in recent history.² This decline followed sustained public investment in violence prevention strategies, including community-based interventions, firearm policy changes, and coordinated public safety initiatives, alongside renewed federal investments in research and surveillance infrastructure.

Critical gains in reducing firearm-related harm are now in jeopardy. Recent federal administrative actions and funding withdrawals threaten to dismantle the foundational infrastructure that undergirds public safety in the United States. These actions encompass the termination of crucial research funding, the curtailment of gun law enforcement, and possible repeal of evidence-informed firearm regulations, all of which pose a direct risk to the public’s collective safety and are likely to undermine the progress achieved in recent years. Absent continued intervention, the United States faces a grave risk of backsliding into patterns of preventable violence and inequitable harms.

PROGRESS TOWARD FIREARM VIOLENCE PREVENTION

Firearm violence is a central focus of the nation’s broader violence prevention strategy. Between 2021 and 2024, federal, state, and local governments implemented a series of coordinated interventions designed to reduce firearm-related harm. The US Department of Justice launched the Community-Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative, directing substantial resources toward local programs that employed trained community members to prevent shootings and provide support to those at highest risk for violence involvement.

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act expanded background check requirements to include firearm transfers by anyone selling firearms for profit, provided training and technical assistance for the implementation of extreme risk protection orders, and significantly increased mental health support in K–12 school settings. The legislation allocated $1.6 billion in funding for community-based violence prevention strategies with political support from both sides of the aisle. At the regulatory level, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives introduced new measures in 2022 to curb the proliferation of unserialized, privately made firearms (also known as “ghost guns”) and combat firearm trafficking.

Many of these policy advances were supported by the creation of state and municipal offices of violence prevention across the United States and the expansion of hospital-based violence intervention programs. Collectively, these actions marked a significant step toward institutionalizing a multisector approach to firearm violence prevention, one informed by research and built on sustained partnerships across public health, law enforcement, and community-based organizations. The establishment of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention in 2023 further formalized this work by providing a centralized federal office tasked with coordinating gun violence reduction efforts across agencies.

Equally critical to these developments was the revitalization of research capacity at the federal level. After decades of restricted federal funding, both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health have provided increased support for studies focused on firearm violence prevention.³ These efforts recognized that firearm violence and its related harms constitute a leading public health challenge, warranting rigorous investigation and sustained investment in solutions. These research investments contributed life-saving insights, a surge of new findings, and the rapid growth of a highly interdisciplinary research field dedicated to addressing firearm violence while respecting the Second Amendment rights of firearm owners. This perspective was reflected in the 2024 advisory issued by United States surgeon general Vivek Murthy, who identified firearm violence as a public health crisis and provided guidance on best practices for prevention and response.

UNRAVELING FEDERAL SUPPORT

Since January 2025, a wide-ranging retrenchment of federal support for firearm violence prevention has taken place. On the first day of the new presidential administration, the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention was disbanded. The advisory issued by Murthy and its corresponding resources were removed. These decisions were followed by extensive staffing reductions at the CDC, including the near elimination of its Division of Violence Prevention.⁴ The cuts had immediate effects across the CDC. For instance, nearly the entire team responsible for maintaining the Division of Injury Prevention’s Web-Based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System received termination notices with the exception of a small suicide prevention unit.⁵

In parallel, the Department of Justice rescinded hundreds of millions of dollars for firearm violence prevention grants, resulting in the abrupt discontinuation of programs serving communities at elevated risk for firearm-related harm. These terminations also targeted victim services grants, shuttering centers that provide vital resources to survivors of violence as well as substance use disorder treatment programs. Both are critical resources to help mitigate the long-term consequences of exposure to violence.^6,7 Federal grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have been terminated, with limited explanation to affected investigators. Researchers have lost essential funding, forcing the closure of labs and triggering staff layoffs. This abrupt withdrawal of support has had immediate consequences for ongoing studies and has introduced significant uncertainty into the research ecosystem.

These administrative actions have occurred alongside overt political efforts to delegitimize the scientific basis of violence prevention. A small group of members of Congress recently called for a complete ban on federally funded firearm research, echoing the restrictions that effectively halted federal inquiry into firearm violence for more than two decades, resulting in a lost generation of researchers and progress.⁸ Simultaneously, firearm regulations previously enacted to better regulate law-breaking firearm dealers have been repealed by the current administration, despite evidence that similar regulations deter illegal firearm trafficking.^9,10 Furthermore, cuts to Medicaid approved by Congress threaten to reduce health care coverage for millions of low- and middle-income households while exacerbating conditions likely to increase violence.¹¹

Together, these actions constitute a comprehensive rollback of the federal government’s role in preventing firearm-related harm. Before the Biden administration, the responsibility for preventing firearm violence fell largely to individual states for decades in the absence of federal leadership. Given the changes at the federal level, state actions will again become imperative.

The implications of this reversal are far reaching. Firearm violence, including suicide, remains the leading cause of death among children and adolescents and contributes significantly to racial, geographic, and socioeconomic health disparities.¹² Exposure to firearm violence—whether direct, witnessed, or anticipated—is linked to psychological distress, chronic illness, functional impairment, and premature mortality.¹³ These harms disproportionately affect communities of color, and firearm suicide places a particularly heavy burden on residents of rural areas.¹⁴ The dismantling of firearm violence prevention systems jeopardizes the capacity of communities across the United States to respond effectively to these risks, and consequently the likelihood of preventable firearm-related harm will almost certainly rise.

SAFETY REQUIRES SYSTEMS

The rapid dismantling of violence prevention infrastructure must be met with a collective and urgent response. Leaders across the medical, scientific, and public health communities must reaffirm the essential role of rigorous research and application of evidence to practice in safeguarding population health. Professional societies, academic institutions, and peer-reviewed journals can serve as critical platforms for articulating the importance of continued investment in prevention infrastructure and for defending the scientific integrity of this field of inquiry.

Firearm violence prevention is not the exclusive domain of any single discipline, nor is it a partisan issue. It is a shared responsibility rooted in public health principles, grounded in empirical evidence, and realized through institutional coordination. Critically, we must resist reverting back to strategies that rely solely on law enforcement and instead prioritize coalition-based approaches that avoid the collateral harms produced by the criminal justice system.¹⁵ The systems that reduce harm—from reducing tobacco-related deaths to creating safer workplaces—operate effectively because they are supported, maintained, and improved over time. The same must be true for firearm violence prevention.

As scholars, we have a responsibility to mentor the next generation of researchers and support early career colleagues, even in a hostile funding environment. We must actively defend the role of science in shaping public safety. That means not only producing high-quality research but also speaking out, publicly and persistently, about the value of firearm violence prevention and the evidence behind it. In moments such as this, sustained scholarly engagement is not just valuable, it is essential.

The recent decline in firearm-related harm demonstrates that strategic, evidence-based interventions can reduce harm and improve public safety. Yet, this progress is contingent on systems—research institutions, public health agencies, law enforcement, community organizations, and federal and state policies—that must be sustained to be effective. Disinvestment from these systems is likely to result in measurable harm, injury, and death.

It is imperative that the nation’s public safety infrastructure remain intact and supported. The protection of lives and the prevention of suffering require not only intention but institutional capacity. We must act to ensure that the systems enabling firearm violence prevention are restored and remain a national priority.