California officials are touting a historic three-year decrease in homicides and gun violence that has led to the state\u2019s lowest number of killings on record.<\/p>\n
The number of homicides in California decreased by 35% between 2022 and 2024, with 2,304 deaths reported in 2022 and 1,768 in 2024, according data from<\/a> the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The dip in homicides was most pronounced for teenage and young adult Black and Latino males, who have historically faced the highest risk of being killed or injured by gunshot wounds. Suicides, the most common type of gun deaths, also fell to record lows, according to the report.<\/p>\n California officials say the decrease is the result of the state\u2019s strict gun policies, increased use of emergency risk protection orders and gun violence restraining orders\u2013also known as red-flag laws \u2013 and investments in violence prevention programs that seek to reach the people who make up the majority of the state\u2019s gunshot-wound victims and perpetrators.<\/p>\n \u201cThis progress didn\u2019t happen by accident; it wasn\u2019t dumb luck or happenstance. It wasn\u2019t inevitable,\u201d the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, said at a press conference on Tuesday. \u201cIt is the result of strong gun safety laws, firearm industry oversight and gun reforms. And historic recent investments in gun violence prevention.\u201d<\/p>\n California\u2019s decline is a part of a larger national decrease in killings across the US, with cities across the country seeing large declines.<\/p>\n California\u2019s office of gun violence prevention examined the trends, and on Tuesday released its findings on gun violence dynamics in the state, and the outstanding challenges in tackling persistent issues like domestic violence and racial disparities among gunshot wound victims.<\/p>\n The report paints a complicated picture on the safety of the people who have long faced the highest risk of being on either side of a shooting \u2013 Black and Latino men and teen boys.<\/p>\n On one hand, the decrease in killings was most pronounced among this demographic, with the number of Black and Latino male homicide victims decreasing 48% and 52% respectively.<\/p>\n Despite the decrease, stubborn trends persist. Of the more than 10,700 people who were shot and injured between 2022-24, nearly 90% were male and about 75% were Black, Latino and in their 20s.<\/p>\n Most women who are killed in the state, as in the rest of the US, die as the result of domestic violence, the report states. And though the overall numbers of homicides in California are at their lowest rate since the state began keeping track in 1968, the number of domestic violence homicides in that same year was 21% higher than it was in 2014.<\/p>\n Like male victims of homicide, Black and Latina women are also overrepresented among women who are killed, the report shows. For white women the rate was 8% higher in 2024 than a decade earlier, Latina women saw a 27% jump, and there was a 61% increase for Black women, according to the report.<\/p>\n Gun violence prevention organizations have faced growing challenges in the second Trump administration, as the federal government has moved to cancel millions of dollars in aid. Organizations tackling the persistent racial disparities in domestic violence and community gun violence have been hit particularly hard, with the administration<\/a> cutting grants because they were found to violate its new federal policies on diversity, equity and inclusion.<\/p>\n Grant applications for the US Department of Justice\u2019s community-based violence intervention and prevention initiative (CVIPI), the prime funding source for groups working to prevent gun violence in rural and underserved communities, was re-released last October, but the non-profits CVIPI was built around were disqualified from applying<\/a>.<\/p>\n The federal cuts have led to a tripling in applicants seeking funding from the California violence intervention and prevention grant program (CalVIP), the state\u2019s dedicated funding source for gun violence prevention work, according to the report. It would cost over $1bn to fund all of the applicants but CalVIP only has about $100m in available funding for the upcoming 2026-29 grant.<\/p>\n \u201cThis progress is fragile,\u201d Bonta said. \u201cIt was driven in significant part by investments that are now declining or disappearing and without continued and increased investment we risk losing it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California officials are touting a historic three-year decrease in homicides and gun violence that has led to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-281991","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}