Delaware hasn’t always been known for passing a lot of gun safety legislation. That’s changed in recent years. Since 2018, the country’s second-smallest state has methodically enacted a suite of reforms, from a red flag law allowing the temporary removal of firearms from people in crisis and a ban on the sale of assault-style weapons, to a landmark permit-to-purchase law for handguns.
But with new laws come implementation challenges, Delaware State Representative Mara Gorman, a Democrat from Newark, told me: “We don’t always have the coordination, even in a state this size, that it takes to do all of the violence prevention work that needs to happen.”
Enter the state’s new Office of Gun Violence Prevention, established by Governor Matt Meyer on May 1. For advocates and officials in Delaware, the new office represents an opportunity to weave together the disparate threads of prevention work — from community violence intervention programs to law enforcement efforts and public awareness campaigns — into a more cohesive and effective strategy.
Delaware is part of a broader trend. So far this year, three states have established or expanded gun violence prevention offices, including Wisconsin in January and New York this month.
That brings the total number of states with such offices to 15. Six years ago, that number was zero.
The new efforts come at a pivotal moment.
Following the Trump administration’s January closure of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention — an entity that had symbolized the federal government’s heightened focus on the issue under President Joe Biden — states are increasingly shouldering the responsibility of countering the crisis.
Gorman sees Delaware’s move as part of a burgeoning, state-driven strategy to sustain and advance the work of gun violence prevention under a new administration that has rolled back federal efforts.
“We’ve seen that the federal administration is not only not interested in taking the lead, but they’re going to roll back protections,” said Gorman, who was a gun violence prevention advocate before becoming a lawmaker. “It’s going to be up to us to make sure that we keep our good laws, and that we address the root causes.”
In Delaware, Meyer’s executive order established the new office on his 100th day as governor, signaling its importance. It is housed within the state’s Department of Safety and Homeland Security, and it aims to be a central nervous system for the state’s prevention work. A key priority, Gorman said, is bolstering Delaware’s community violence intervention groups.
“We have a lot of smaller organizations that really need support to continue to do the work that they do,” she said. “Especially when you think about federal funds for this kind of work being cut.”
Beyond violence intervention, the office will focus on the practical implementation of Delaware’s laws, including the state’s new permit-to-purchase law, set to go into effect later this year. It also plans to help with the red flag law, which temporarily bars people who may be a danger from having guns under a legal tool known in Delaware as a Lethal Violence Protective Order. Advocates say the law, passed in 2018, has been underutilized.
“This is a law that’s designed to be very preventive, but yet in Delaware, they’re really only being used in emergency settings,” said Traci Murphy, the executive director of the Coalition for a Safer Delaware, a gun violence prevention advocacy group. She attributed the limited use to a lack of public awareness and coordinated outreach — a gap the new office could fill.
In New York, lawmakers transitioned a gun violence prevention office previously created by executive order into a permanent entity.
“We have to have one place where we focus solely on preventing gun violence in this state,” said New York State Senator Zellnor Myrie, a Democrat who led the push for the permanent office. “But executives come and executives go. It’s really important to have these types of efforts in statute so that, regardless of who is governor, the resources remain and the focus on the issue remains.”
With an initial $3 million state budget, New York’s office has a broad mandate. A core function will be to identify funding opportunities for violence prevention programs and create a centralized hub for organizations to access that money.
“There are numerous different agencies — the Office of Victim Services and the Office of Domestic Violence and the Department of Criminal Justice Services and the Education Department — within New York state that each do different types of work that help reduce gun violence,” said Rebecca Fischer, executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. “But it’s all very siloed, and we think that it will increase efficiency, coordination, and impact by having a centralized office coordinate with all these different agencies.”
After recent federal cuts to data collection and research on shooting injuries, the New York office is tasked with strengthening state-level data gathering. It will also coordinate hospital-based violence intervention programs and work to enhance public education on safe storage and red flag law orders, which are used at dramatically different levels depending on the county in New York.
The office also has a specific mandate to facilitate responses in the aftermath of mass shootings. A provision in the law allows it to step in when three or more people are injured, a broader trigger than the state’s existing statutory definition of a mass shooting. (That other definition requires more fatalities and, as The Trace reported, threatened to shut out communities from emergency funding and other services.)
The new law also moves the office from the state’s Department of Health to the Department of Criminal Justice Services. Advocates hope the move will provide access to DCJS’s more extensive data and resources, though they note that the $3 million budget is modest for the office’s ambitious scope.
“It is a start and a down payment,” Myrie, the state senator, said about the funding. “But it’s certainly not sufficient, and we’ll be fighting for more in the future.”
Wisconsin also joined the trend in January, with its governor establishing a state office of violence prevention via executive order. That follows Maryland, Connecticut, and Maine, which created offices last year.
The path ahead for state offices includes challenges — primarily securing consistent and adequate funding and, for those established by executive order, ensuring long-term durability. But they also represent significant hope.
“I’m so proud of our state for grabbing hold of this one,” said Murphy, the advocate in Delaware. “I really do think we can be a leader.”
