Leading gun violence researchers warn that firearm violence prevention is in peril in the U.S.
Categories: Faculty, Leadership, Research, Tanya Sharpe
Dr. Tanya Sharpe
Critical efforts to reduce firearm-related violence in the United States are now in jeopardy due to recent cuts to gun violence research and prevention programs. This, coupled with overt political efforts to delegitimize evidence-based strategies to address firearm-related harms, threaten recent gains in public safety.
This is the conclusion of 13 leading experts on gun violence from across America. In a recent editorial published in the American Journal of Public Health, the researchers warn that the U.S. “faces a grave risk of backsliding into patterns of preventable violence and inequitable harms.”
“The implications of this reversal are far reaching,” write the researchers, who include Dr. Tanya L. Sharpe, a full professor at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. “Firearm violence, including suicide, remains the leading cause of death among children and adolescents and contributes significantly to racial, geographic, and socioeconomic health disparities.”
Roughly 80% of homicides in the U.S. involved a firearm.
Since January 2025, the retrenchment of support for gun violence prevention has included:
- Disbanding the White House Office on Gun Violence Prevention
- Termination of crucial research funding (with a small group of members of Congress calling for a complete ban on federally funded firearm research)
- Extensive staffing reductions at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including the near elimination of its Division of Violence Prevention
- Repealing regulations that have been shown to deter illegal firearm trafficking
- Rescinding hundreds of millions of dollars for firearm violence prevention resulting in the discontinuation of programs serving communities at elevated risk of firearm-related harm, and
- Cuts to Medicaid that threaten to reduce health care coverage while exacerbating conditions known to increase violence.
“We live in a global community, where actions abroad have local impact,” says Dr. Sharpe, whose work leading the Centre for Research & Innovation for Black Survivors of Homicide Victims (The CRIB) underscores the global impact of homicide grief. “The ripple effect of the cost-cutting measures that we are now seeing in the United States will also be felt by Canadians, many of whom have loved ones south of the border. Our ability to advance evidence-based research in this area is also under threat as our key American collaborators lose support.”
Dr. Sharpe’s research in Canada and the United States addresses the distinct grief and psychological distress experienced by those who have lost loved ones to homicide. Chronic Illness, functional impairment, and premature mortality are also linked to exposure to firearm violence.
“These harms disproportionately affect communities of color, and firearm suicide places a particularly heavy burden on residents of rural areas,” write the experts in the editorial. “We must actively defend the role of science in shaping public safety. That means not only producing high-quality research but also speaking out, publicly and persistently, about the value of firearm violence prevention and the evidence behind it.”
Firearm violence prevention in peril: A call to defend our public safety infrastructure
What’s new?
- In 2024, the U.S. saw a historic 16% drop in homicides, a signal that coordinated evidence-based prevention efforts are effective with proper investment.
- In 2025, a wave of federal cuts and policy reversals is dismantling the systems that helped achieve this progress.
What’s at Risk?
- Without continued investment in violence prevention efforts, firearm-related deaths including suicides, homicides and unintentional shootings are likely to rise.
- The rollback of prevention systems threatens to deepen racial and geographic disparities in exposure to gun violence.
Why it matters?
- Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the U.S.
- Exposure to gun violence, even if someone is not directly shot, can result in PTSD, chronic pain and illness, and long-term functional disability.
- Prevention requires research, community outreach, collaboration across agencies, and sustained federal leadership.
What should be done?
- Restore and protect federal funding for gun violence research and prevention.
- Support state and local offices of violence prevention, especially where federal support has been cut.
- Uphold the role of science in informing public safety policy while rejecting efforts to politicize or suppress evidence.
Source: : Firearm Violence Prevention in Peril: A Call to Defend Our Public Safety Infrastructure American Journal of Public Health 115, 1805_1808,https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2025.308231
Read more from Rutgers University: Why the Collapse of Firearm Violence Prevention Is a Threat to U.Sl Lives
Media contact
Dale Duncan
Senior Communications Strategist
Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work
University of Toronto
dale.duncan@utoronto.ca
416-978-2518