Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting
What if changing the way journalists and news organizations report on gun violence could prevent shootings and save lives? PCGVR.org
- The Democratic U.S. Senate candidate would also continue to call for universal background checks, a renewed assault weapons ban and more robust community violence intervention funding:
- We just sent our monthly Reporting Prevention newsletter early since we'll be extra busy with the Knight Media Forum next week. In this edition: PCGVR goes global... Directors sharing knowledge.. plus all the usual sections, headlines, and more.. Read & subscribe for free" mailchi.mp/pcgvr/101819...
- “The observed geographic disparities likely reflect differences in state-level firearm-related legislation as well as policies regarding access to comprehensive reproductive health care.”
- US gun sales increased in 44 states during January, compared to the previous month, including 12 states showing double-digit increases, with a 21% increase in Virginia and 19% increase in Minnesota. Ten states saw double-digit increases compared with January, 2025.
- Philadelphia year-to-date homicides are down 48 percent compared to last year and down 79 percent in comparison with the same period five years ago, during the pandemic-era spike in 2021, according to Philadelphia Police data: www.phillypolice.com/crime-data/c...
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- In 2023... 13.5% of American households experienced food insecurity... For each 1% increase in food insecurity, firearm injury rates increase by an estimated 56 cases per 100,000. This association remains on a granular level in our cities and even specific zip codes."
- "In July 2016, 32-year-old Philando Castile, a Black man, was shot and killed... by a police officer... Castile was pulled over and told the officer that he had a gun – for which he had a permit – in the car. Seconds after the disclosure, the officer shot Castile five times, killing him."
- “We have a real opportunity to create a regional strategy that can prevent firearms from flooding into vulnerable communities... And I’m really excited through the relationships I have to build that out and to find partners beyond the boundaries of D.C. to protect communities here.”
- "The stakes extend beyond researchers’ careers and white papers. Research is often directly connected to anti-violence work on the ground, and their funding is often intertwined."
- "What is happening now, in other words, is a reminder that the argument about government tyranny was always a canard. Beneath it lurked what was really at stake, which was the right to assert control through force."
- The budget proposal calls for a $5.5 million increase to the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency’s (PCCD) Violence Intervention and Prevention (VIP) program, bringing the 2026-2027 allocation to $68.5 million..."
- "Shootings are not inevitable; they are a choice, and one the U.S. has made over and over again... Until our leaders decide that students deserve sympathy before they are already dead, the issue of mass shootings will never be fixed." Student:
- “When there’s overt physical violence, there’s also the shock waves of structural violence, and children are very sensitive to the waves as they come and go in the news.”
- "Anniversaries like this are painful. But they are also powerful. They remind us why we started. They remind us what’s at stake. And they remind us that progress, while slow and imperfect, is possible when we refuse to give up. We owe it to the victims of Parkland. We owe it to the next generation."
- “These encounters with federal agents are changing the community and changing many lives, including ours, forever.”
- "Tough bail and sentencing laws cause unintended consequences that actually cost governments more by failing to break cycles of incarceration. Violence and gang membership can emerge from a complex interplay of risks across childhood and adolescence. These are unlikely to be shifted by legislation."
- Feeling honored to report: PCGVR has been invited & joined the Global Coalition for WHO Action on Gun Violence. WHO Action is "calling on the World Health Organization (WHO) to reprioritise gun violence prevention and care for survivors and those affected by gun violence." Find us at: whoaction.org
- We collaborate with @billy-penn.bsky.social to produce the Weekly Brief on gun violence prevention, delivered via their daily newsletter every Wednesday. Here's this week's edition: mailchi.mp/billypenn/we...
- “Our findings provide rigorous evidence that ERPO laws can prevent firearm suicides without measurable increases in suicides by other means."
- "In the fifth edition of this report, the authors incorporate more-recent research in their synthesis of the available scientific data regarding the effects of 18 state firearm policies on firearm injuries and deaths, violent crime, suicides, the gun industry, defensive gun use, and other outcomes."
- The study’s authors hypothesized that evictions could worsen neighborhood collective efficacy, because of its destabilizing effect on individuals and communities, and would be associated with higher rates of firearm violence.
- Pennsylvania faith leaders gathered last week at the State Capitol to publicly launch With One Voice, a new interfaith coalition of more than 100 clergy, congregations and lay leaders, united by a shared moral call to end gun violence and save lives. Statement: drive.google.com/file/d/1pVEz...
- “Republicans are saying, ‘Don’t bring your guns to protests,’ after 10 years of saying, ‘Of course you can bring guns to protests.’"
- Gun Violence Archive data show more that 1,000 people killed and 1,700 injured in US shootings during January. Twenty-eight mass shootings were recorded: www.gunviolencearchive.org
- "States that implement more restrictive firearm laws experience significantly fewer school shootings... Can function as a structural determinant of child and adolescent health, showing the promise of moving beyond an individual focus on psychological risk factors to a more systematic approach."
- “When people’s basic social and emotional needs are met, they are far less likely to be involved in violence... People who get shot or stabbed are vastly more likely to have been excluded from systems—kicked out of school, kicked out of housing..."
- "Individuals threatened by Trump administration policies appear to be experiencing urges to acquire firearms, carry them, and store them readily accessible... The current political environment may be fostering community-level decision making that... increases the risk for harm."
- The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office distributed $3 million in Violence Prevention Grants to community-based groups in 2025 and more than $7M total since the initiative began in 2021. mailchi.mp/c0721f7524c3...
- Register for free now and log in Thursday to hear from Oronde live on this expert panel:
- "ERPO laws in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Rhode Island were associated with substantial reductions in firearm suicides, with no evidence of substitution with nonfirearm methods." jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
- “Survivors have always been at the center of my work because we live with the consequences long after the headlines fade... If you don’t listen to the people who’ve been harmed, you can’t truly understand the problem—or be a part of the solution.”
- "Each year, 20,000 children and adolescents across the U.S. lose a parent to gun violence, while an estimated two to three times more have a parent who has been injured due to a firearm."
- "Individuals that are on site where they are witnessing these effects in their neighborhoods get affected at a much higher level, but even those millions more that end up watching it on social media or traditional news sites also have those experiences."
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- We produced this resource for a webinar but we are now sharing these responses in the hope that they will help others strengthen their practice, minimize harm and advance gun violence prevention.
- In Philadelphia, where many young people have lost friends to shootings or live in places that feel unsafe, chess clubs serve as a haven.
- "In 2025, weapons manufacturers received a record $120.7 million through DHS contracts."
- “It has turned out empirically that violence behaves as if it were a health problem, whether we want to consider it one or not."
- "A steady stream of research has connected housing to public safety. In 2023, a University of Pennsylvania study found that fixing up clusters of abandoned homes with new doors and windows, and clearing yard weeds reduces gun crime compared to clusters of houses that received no remediation."
- "More than 100 people across the country have alleged their P320s fired when they didn’t pull the trigger. The shootings have injured dozens and killed three, including a Pennsylvania father and a New Jersey police officer."
- “It’s kind of what we expected, and kind of what we want to see."
- “When people’s basic social and emotional needs are met, they are far less likely to be involved in violence.”
- We collaborate with @billy-penn.bsky.social to produce the Weekly Brief on gun violence prevention, delivered via their daily newsletter every Wednesday. Here's this week's edition: mailchi.mp/billypenn/we...
- "From a public health perspective, firearms function like any other highly lethal consumer product: their increasing availability increases injury and death. This is not a statement about individual intent or morality. It is about exposure and risk."
- Reposted by Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting[Not loaded yet]
- "Mass shootings in majority-White neighborhoods received about twice the media attention as those occurring in neighborhoods where a majority of residents were people of color. Conversely... coverage of police-involved shootings was disproportionately focused on communities of color."
- "We seek to present — but not adjudicate — the facts in hand. We reveal all the facts we can uncover; we don’t present evidence to support a case. We uncover wrongdoing; we don’t declare guilt or innocence."
- Also happening: GVA tracks 21 mass shootings so far in 2026 www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass...
- "But the calm is precarious. To keep it, we will have to figure out what made it possible in the first place."
- The rate of homicide decline by percentage did not increase during 2025 in Philadelphia for the first time in several years but total homicides still decreased 17.4% v. 2024. philly-stat-360.phila.gov/pages/homici...
