If you follow the news about gun violence in America, you know that there’s a lot to be pessimistic about.
Guns were already a major public health concern when the pandemic hit and the murder rate skyrocketed. The surge in homicide in 2020 and 2021, research has shown, was best understood as a surge in gun violence, with firearms-related deaths counting for the majority of the increase. Not all communities suffered equally: In 2020, 61 percent of victims of gun homicide were Black, with the largest increases among boys and men ages 10–44. The following year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, the number of mass shootings — shootings in which four or more people, not including the shooter, are shot and injured or killed — reached 689, up more than 50 percent from the number of mass shootings in 2018.
But that hasn’t really happened. Some of the worst-case scenarios, based on the recent trends around gun violence, haven’t yet come to pass. To be clear, the United States still has exceptionally high levels of gun violence. The country has more guns per capita than any other nation on Earth, and a messy patchwork of laws that make regulation extremely difficult. For those reasons, the country is still incredibly vulnerable to seeing more gun-related deaths in the future.
But we’re so used to bad news about gun violence, and the fact that Republicans refuse to pass better gun regulations, it’s easy to feel like the issue is hopeless and tune out. So it’s important to acknowledge that in some key ways, this year was better than the last — and that 2024 was an important step in the right direction.
The US saw less gun deaths in 2024
Murder likely fell at the fastest rate ever recorded this year, according to crime data analyst Jeff Asher — which is particularly impressive when you consider that murder fell at the fastest rate ever recorded last year, too. Those numbers will almost certainly be revised somewhat, but the overall picture is unlikely to change. Because the large majority of homicides in the United States are firearm-related, it’s safe to attribute the decline to a reduction in gun deaths. And it’s manifested as big, double-digit reductions of murders in cities that have long suffered from the epidemic of gun violence, including Baltimore, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.
It’s hard to overstate just how meaningful that is. As Asher notes, “the rapid decline in murder has led to more than 5,000 fewer murder victims this year compared to the 2020 to 2022 years.”
The pandemic-era murder spike, in other words, appears to be over. What happened? Experts are careful not to attribute the rise and fall of murder to any single cause. But the return to work and school following pandemic disruptions and closures, and a renewed effort at gun violence reduction in many US cities, supported by federal funding, almost certainly helped. Whatever the reason, the outcome is thousands of lives saved.
The outbreak of political violence that wasn’t
One of the crucial concerns gun and political violence researchers had going into 2024 was whether we’d see an outbreak of unrest following the presidential election. The concern was not unfounded. Recent studies have shown that a small but worrying number of Americans increasingly believe that a more violent era of American life is coming. A smaller percentage of those people say that violence is justified for political reasons, and that they are willing to participate in political violence.
Then, in July, a gunman shot at President-elect Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and came hair-raisingly close to striking his head (instead, according to investigators, the bullet grazed Trump’s ear.) Two months later, another man attempted it again — though that time the Secret Service were able to respond before he opened fire.
“The set of circumstances most likely to produce political violence in this country in the next few months are a closely contested election, with momentum swinging to Democrats, and with high-profile instances of political violence having already occurred,” political violence researcher Garen J. Wintemute told Vox after the first assassination attempt.
The polls showed a close election, up until the very end. Trump repeatedly attacked the legitimacy of the electoral process. And the memory of January 6, 2021, when the then-president incited a mob to a violent, armed insurrection at the US Capitol to protest his election loss, was fresh in everyone’s mind.
But it didn’t happen — perhaps because the election wasn’t a long, drawn-out fight, and perhaps because Trump won. Whatever the reason, the US came back from what seemed like the brink of a dangerous moment. That’s not to say the country couldn’t find itself there again, and soon. The recent shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and the lionization of his alleged killer, Luigi Mangione, have revealed there may be more openness to political violence in the American public than previously realized. And research of mass shooters show that when a shooter receives lots of public attention, it tends to inspire copycats.
In 2024, though, the worst fears about election violence didn’t come to pass.
And it’s not just political violence. Though a student in Wisconsin killed a classmate and a teacher in December, overall, mass shootings also appear to have declined in 2024, from 656 incidents in 2023 to 491 in 2024. No one is exactly sure why — but it’s undeniably a good thing.
The scourge of ghost guns eases
The assassination of Thompson in December was newsworthy for a number of reasons, one of them being that it appeared to be the first high-profile killing using a ghost gun — in this case, one that the alleged shooter 3D printed himself.
Ghost guns don’t have serial numbers, which make them difficult for law enforcement to track where they came from. For that reason, they’re especially appealing for people looking to commit crimes and not get caught.
They’ve become a huge problem in recent years, with the number of such weapons being recovered from crime scenes increasing a staggering 1,083 percent between 2017 and 2021. Many of these guns were not printed at home, like Mangione’s apparently was, but instead were sold as easy-to-assemble kits online. Just one ghost gun manufacturer was responsible for 88 percent of the guns recovered during that time.
The government moved quickly to address the problem. In 2022, the Biden administration said that the ghost gun kits and their receivers (or frames) were subject to the same federal regulations as regular guns — meaning, they needed a serial number. The rule was challenged in the courts, but it appears that the Supreme Court is likely to uphold the law, which the government says is necessary for cracking down on the untraceable guns. Meanwhile, the gunmaker responsible for most of the guns showing up at crime scenes was hit with lawsuits. It appears they have since shut down. According to an analysis by The Trace, the numbers of ghost guns being recovered from crime scenes are now falling in several cities.
Of course, the United States still has too many guns — and a regulatory system that resembles Swiss cheese. As long as that’s the case, the country will likely deal with elevated levels of gun deaths. But the developments this year show that the situation isn’t hopeless. Meaningful attempts to address gun violence and regulate firearms do work — and can save lives.
