Over the past year and a half, this newsletter has spent a lot of time covering gun violence prevention policy in the nation’s capital.

There’s been good reason for that. Under the Biden administration, the federal government has consistently tried to move the needle on gun violence — from the work of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s historic report on gun violence, to a new national resource center for red flag laws and partnerships between federal and local law enforcement to track crime guns.

But as we look ahead to 2025 and beyond, The Trajectory’s focus may need to shift. President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House — accompanied by a Republican-controlled Congress and Supreme Court — means that action on gun violence in Washington, D.C., is unlikely. Some of the Biden administration’s work may even be reversed.

The good news? Not all progress will be easily undone. And many of the administration’s initiatives have already begun to lay a foundation for lasting change. Key federal efforts, like the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — the first gun violence prevention law in 30 years — are unlikely to be repealed. Republicans likely won’t have the votes to enact any overarching changes of their own. 

In the interim, states and local communities can carry the torch. And they’re more than up to the task. This year, we’ve seen bold actions at every level outside Washington, alongside a promising national trend: fewer murders. While the federal landscape remains uncertain, 2024 offered plenty of solutions with the potential to endure — and even grow stronger — no matter who’s in the Oval Office. 

Here are just a few of the highlights.

Gun Violence Is Continuing to Plummet Nationwide

Before we dive into the policy movements from this year, we should take stock of where the nation’s gun violence epidemic stands. When I was writing the 2023 end-of-year Trajectory, the scale of a historic decline in violence was just beginning to come into focus. This year, the data is even more encouraging: Not only are most parts of the country seeing declining gun violence, but many cities are now also back to pre-pandemic levels, or lower.

Data collected by crime analyst Jeff Asher show that across 277 major cities in the U.S., there has been an 18 percent drop in murders so far in 2024 — an even larger decrease than in 2023, when murders were down by about 12 percent this time last year. Both the 2023 and 2024 declines are historic in scale.

Looking a bit closer at those numbers, many U.S. cities that have long suffered elevated rates of gun violence are seeing welcome reductions. Philadelphia, for example, has seen a drop of 43 percent to a decade low, New Orleans murders are down 40 percent, and Washington, D.C. — which was still seeing increases last year — is now down 31 percent. All 10 U.S. cities with more than 1 million people have shown declines in murder so far this year, including Chicago, according to Asher’s data. Cities like Baltimore, where murders are down 29 percent this year, and Detroit, where they’re down 19 percent, are at record-low levels of gun violence, according to a Trace analysis.

Nationwide, data from the Gun Violence Archive shows that shooting deaths are down 12 percent, injuries are down 13 percent, and mass shootings have decreased by 24 percent, compared to the first 11 months of 2023. Meanwhile, ghost gun recoveries — once a growing concern — are falling in many cities. In Baltimore, for example, recoveries dropped 18.5 percent this year, after a 25 percent decline in 2023.

Stay tuned for The Trace’s end-of-year data story, publishing December 31, which will dive even deeper into the trends from this year.

States Are Moving on Prevention

While federal progress on gun safety was for so long stalled and, at best, incremental, states are continuing to make bold changes. And, as we learned earlier this year with the RAND Corporation’s updated Science of Gun Policy report, state-level action on policies like waiting periods, expanded background checks, and stronger child access prevention laws can reduce gun violence and suicide.

Some states made notable gains on policies like those, and more, in 2024:

  • Maine expanded background checks to cover more private gun sales, instituted a 72-hour waiting period on gun purchases, and updated its “yellow flag” law. The state also allocated $1 million to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services Injury and Violence Prevention Program.
  • New York passed a slew of gun safety laws, which we covered in The Trajectory, including funding for school-based violence intervention programs, a crackdown on machine gun conversion devices, and a strengthened red flag law. Lawmakers also reinforced the state’s public nuisance law targeting gun manufacturers.
  • Vermont banned ghost guns.
  • California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Mexico passed laws (or strengthened existing laws) to restrict guns at polling sites before the election this year.
  • Michigan was the latest state to ban guns at polling places, ballot boxes, and vote counting sites. Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed that legislation into law on December 3. State laws for expanded background checks, a red flag measure, and safe storage requirements went into effect in February.
  • Colorado voters passed a referendum enacting a 6.5 percent excise tax on the sales of guns and ammo, which will help fund violence prevention programs.
  • Washington State expanded the list of places where it bans open carry, enacted additional penalties for gun owners who fail to report theft of weapons, and increased regulations on federally licensed gun dealers.
  • Maryland created a statewide office for gun violence prevention, heeding a call from the Biden administration and joining the ranks of states that have established such centers.

Local Efforts Lead the Charge

Going another step down in the government hierarchy, local and county governments and nonprofit community organizations are showing that they, too, can help survivors and prevent violence through innovative, grassroots solutions — in both Democrat- and Republican-led states.

  • Local offices of violence prevention: States aren’t the only governments launching these. After more than a year of work, leaders from Memphis, Tennessee, and surrounding Shelby County announced the formation of a joint Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement. Hartford, Connecticut, and Jackson County, Missouri, home to Kansas City, also launched offices of violence prevention this year.
  • Also in Memphis, voters approved a slate of gun reforms, including proposals for a local red flag law, local concealed carry permit requirements, and an assault weapons ban. Though the state, which preempts local laws, is unlikely to allow the local regulations to take effect, the local vote shows an appetite for solutions.
  • Oakland, California, residents approved Measure NN, voting to increase their property taxes to up funding for the police, the city’s Department of Violence Prevention, and grassroots violence prevention programs.
  • San Antonio and surrounding Bexar County, Texas, unveiled a comprehensive Violence Prevention Strategic Plan this year, focusing on four priority areas: violence among youth, gun violence, sexual violence, and domestic violence.
  • Johnson County, Iowa, invested more than $200,000 in a Community Violence Intervention Program, funded through the American Rescue Plan through at least 2026. It aims to address the underlying causes of gun violence.

Several strategies gained traction this year, showing new promise for reducing gun violence and supporting affected communities.

  • Violence Reduction Councils — local collaborations between law enforcement, public health officials, social service agencies, and community organizations — are playing an increasingly important role in coordinating community-driven approaches to gun violence prevention. (I recently moderated a panel at the 2024 Bloomberg American Health Summit on Violence Reduction Councils. If you’re interested, you can watch it here.)
  • Los Angeles’s City Attorney’s Office built a partnership between the LAPD’s community policing bureau and local nonprofits, known as the Reach team, that provides timely interventions, crisis response, and mental health services to families that have encountered chronic violence. Since its inception, the team has referred over 1,600 children for services, with nearly 850 receiving crisis counseling or long-term therapy.
  • Telehealth for prevention: As my colleague Fairriona Magee reported in a guest issue of The Trajectory earlier this year, new research showed that remote mental health care can effectively reach underserved populations, particularly youth, who are disproportionately affected by gun violence. High schoolers with a history of carrying firearms were nearly five times more likely to use virtual therapy services, demonstrating the model’s potential to prevent gun violence before it occurs.

There Are Still Bright Spots on the Federal Level

While hopes for new significant federal movement on gun violence may wane in 2025, not all progress from the past year will be so easily undone.

For one, the Biden administration’s ghost gun rule, which appears to be contributing to a dramatic decline in ghost guns used in crimes and helped shut down the nation’s largest ghost gun manufacturer, is likely to survive the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in a case over the regulation earlier this year. If the Supreme Court upholds the rule, that means that it will be difficult, practically and politically, for the Trump administration to reverse it — even if they wanted to. And it’s not clear that they do.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court also upheld an important gun law earlier this year: the federal ban on firearm possession by those subject to domestic violence restraining orders. It was a significant win for gun violence prevention advocates. With its ruling this summer, the Supreme Court also tempered its landmark 2022 Bruen decision.  That likely means that sweeping changes to core federal gun laws banning people considered dangerous from having firearms are not immediately imminent.

Federal investments in gun violence research continue to grow. Since 2020, more than $137 million has been directed to studies exploring effective prevention strategies — a stark contrast to the paltry $24.5 million spent in the previous five years. Republicans may not have the votes to reverse that funding, and even if they do, the research it has produced so far will continue to be useful for years to come. And a reinvigorated field of gun violence research is unlikely to disappear without a fight.

Other federal initiatives, like allowing Medicaid to reimburse violence prevention services and improving data collection through the CDC, are also likely to persist. These efforts, while incremental, provide valuable tools for addressing gun violence at every level.

Before you go

Here are some of my favorite Trajectories of 2024:

And some of my favorite solutions stories from colleagues at The Trace:

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that Maine passed a law banning bump stocks and other machine gun conversion devices. In fact, the measure was enacted by the Legislature but vetoed by Governor Janet Mills. We also corrected the amount Colorado voters approved taxing guns and ammunition. We apologize for the errors and thank the readers who alerted us to them.

Chip Brownlee
Chip is a reporter at The Trace covering federal policy related to violence prevention and firearms. He is also the author of The Trajectory newsletter, which spotlights the people, policies, and programs grappling with America’s gun violence crisis. 

Before joining The Trace as an investigative fellow in June 2020, Chip worked as a reporter and the editor-in-chief of his collegiate newspaper, The Auburn Plainsman. He also covered the state legislature, governor, courts, and elections for the Alabama Political Reporter. As an undergraduate, Chip studied political science and journalism at Auburn University. He also earned an M.A. with a concentration in politics from the Columbia Journalism School.