California AG celebrates historic lows in gun violence, but warns of funding risks

(CN) — California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Tuesday that the state has seen a significant reduction in gun violence in recent years not seen since the 1960s.

According to Bonta, a new report released by the state’s Department of Justice documents how California has made historic progress in addressing gun violence across the state and where additional resources are needed to continue that progress.

“California has achieved something historic, with the lowest rates of firearm deaths, suicides and homicides on record, and that was before President Trump returned to office,” Bonta said during a press conference. “And these reductions were driven by very large declines in shootings in the most impacted communities in our state. But it also makes very clear that this progress is fragile.”

The report, which outlines a five-year strategic plan to reduce gun violence, relies on the Center for Disease Control’s most recent data on gun deaths in the United States for 2024. The 116-page report, “A Strategic Plan to Sustain California’s Record Progress Against Gun Violence,” shows that 2024 was a high-water mark for the state’s gun violence prevention.

The report also says that, as recently as 2010, children under 18 in California were more likely to die from gunshot wounds than children elsewhere in the U.S. Fast-forward 14 years later, that trend had reversed. Children in the rest of the country were nearly three times more likely to die from gunshot wounds than children in California.

The transformation is incredible, Bonta said.

“This progress didn’t just happen by accident,” said Bonta, flanked by public safety advocates.
”It wasn’t dumb luck or happenstance. It wasn’t inevitable. It was the result of strong gun safety laws, firearm industry oversight and ghost gun reforms, and historic recent investments in gun violence prevention, investments in community violence, intervention programs — working to break cycles of violence, trauma, and retaliation — investments in protecting survivors of domestic violence, investments in firearm industry oversight and investments in protective order programs, removing firearms from dangerous situations before tragedy strikes.”

As a result of these actions, the state’s firearm homicide rate dropped by 35% in the past three years, the report said. Firearm homicide rates for young Black and Latino men were also nearly cut in half in the same time period.

“We aren’t just here to talk about statistics,” said Ed Little, government affairs manager for Californians for Safety and Justice. “We’re here to talk about the lives that were saved this year.”

The new data is proof that community investments save lives, and the new data reflects that, Little said.

“If the gun death rate in the rest of the U.S. matched California’s over the last decade, there would have been nearly 160,000 fewer firearm related deaths nationwide,” Bonta said. “I make that point, not to boast or brag, but to show that there is a pathway for change, that we can save lives, if more states do what California has done: implement the common sense policies and initiatives that we’ve implemented. We can literally save tens of thousands of lives.”

However, the progress the state has made was driven in large part by investments that the attorney general said are now disappearing, or are at risk of declining.

“The very programs driving so much of this progress are now facing serious funding cuts, especially as the federal government walks away from its responsibility to fund gun violence prevention and victim care,” Bonta said. “And these programs are also grappling with large declines in state and local investments too. When funding disappears, so do services, so do interventions and, ultimately, we risk losing more lives.”

In order to continue the trend, Bonta said that the state must secure funding. The report highlights four state and local funding investment priorities to maintain the progress in reducing gun violence: community violence intervention and trauma recovery services, domestic violence intervention and victim services, protective order implementation and firearm relinquishment compliance, and trafficking disruption and ghost gun manufacturing.

A 2024 law authored by Assembly Member Buffy Wicks directed the California Department of Justice’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention to produce the report. The report is the first of two parts that outline the state’s strategic plan to reduce gun violence.