“Gun-Violence Prevention” organizations in America face an unprecedented crisis in terms of the progress they’ve made in the past decades being wiped out by the reduction in funds coming from the Federal budget, right when communities are on the verge of establishing the right models to intervene in gun violence in cities across America.
Federal budget reductions eliminate essential programs for violence prevention
The presidential budget has been crushing to gun violence prevention communities in terms of eliminating funding for numerous essential sources of funding. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently has zero funds earmarked for gun violence, which is a major downturn in recent events where gun violence studies conducted by the CDC involved looking at intervention programs in hospitals and anonymous school tip programs that work well in school shootings and suicide prevention.
Community-based programs for the prevention of violence, injury control research centers, and youth violence prevention centers feel the effect with the elimination of funds. The centers collaborated with communities to develop programs that resulted in the reduction of youths’ assaults and illegal acts. The eliminated funds are not only related to gun violence but also cover areas such as suicide prevention, intimate partner violence studies, and even senior fall prevention programs.
Data collection technology will face a total shutdown
The CDC data collection system for non-fatal firearm injuries is being dismantled, thereby eliminating the U.S. feeding trough for data on gunshot injuries. The mass termination of injury prevention scientists in the CDC raises very dubious questions concerning the future viability of other data collection networks, such as the National Violent Death Reporting System.
Cities see less revenue even as infrastructures emerge
The latest Violence Prevention Index from Community Justice finds that while cities are investing in the infrastructure necessary to prevent violence, they’re not investing enough to keep it in place. More than 60 percent of cities evaluated now have an office of violence prevention, an increase of 10 points, while 37 percent of local health departments have made identifiable progress on violence prevention strategies—its highest level since 2022.
Nevertheless, there has been a substantial decrease in expenditures allotted to core intervention techniques, comparatively, in the same period. Outreach intervention methods reduced from 63 percent in 2023 to 60 percent in 2024, while in hospitals, intervention methods reduced from 36 percent to 32 percent, respectively, in 2024, because of the cancellation of $145 million in grants under the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in April by theTrump administration.
“None of these strategies operate in a bubble,” said Adzi Vokhiwa, vice president of policy at Community Justice. “While we find ourselves in the posture of being not-so-strongly partnered with the feds to address violence in a public health manner, cities must take every step to amplify investments.”
Research centers rush to keep vital work
The Injury Control Research Center at Harvard University is one example of institutions’ ways to cope with budget reductions by exploring different sources of funding. The director of the Injury Control Research Center, David Hemenway, explained why they continue to perform their tasks: they currently receive funds from foundations such as the Joyce Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the New Venture Fund, not from Federal funds.
Important Funding Impacts:
- “Zero” funding to the CDC for gun violence research
- Total elimination of community violence prevention programs
- Closure of centers conducting injury control research
- Loss of Youth Violence Prevention Center support
The spillovers go well beyond any current programming reductions. Without investment in understanding injury patterns and forces of community violence, Americans are left vulnerable to further safety hazards that can’t even be precisely calculated because of concurrent cutting back on data collection programs. It is a complete reversal of the data-driven methods to reduce violence in public health on the heels of promising progress.