Gun violence in the United States is a public health crisis.
It goes beyond the mass shootings that grab the nation’s attention. Every day, gun violence takes lives from communities all across the country in the form of suicides, unintentional shootings, and interpersonal conflicts that become fatal due to easy access to guns.
Yet this violence is not inevitable. In 2018, the Center for American Progress released a comprehensive analysis of actions that could be taken to reduce gun violence in America. There is no single, simple solution to reducing gun violence in this country. But these commonsense reforms offer a starting point.
More than 750,000 people gather on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., to advocate for gun violence prevention on March 24, 2018.
(Getty/Giles Clarke)
Read the latest from CAP's Gun Violence Prevention team
Support Local Violence Prevention and Intervention Programs
A comprehensive approach to reducing gun violence must include support for evidence-based violence intervention programs that engage all community stakeholders.
Enable the CDC to Research Gun Violence as a Public Health Issue
Two decades of restrictions on public health research into gun violence has left us willfully ignorant about the full scope of this problem and the most effective interventions to prevent it.
