Over the last year, President Joe Biden has taken a number of measures to address the scourge of gun violence in our country. He proposed an investment of $5 billion over 8 years in community violence intervention efforts, identified 26 existing federal grant programs that would be eligible for helping to combat gun violence, and proposed several new rules for regulating the gun industry—the most recent of which was this week’s announcement of new rules regulating the proliferation of “ghost guns” which are largely untraceable, self-assembled firearms.

Unfortunately, the most consequential of these measures—the historic $5 billion investment—has stalled in Congress right at a time when the U.S. is experiencing the highest number of shootings in over 20 years. These dollars would fund proven community-based interventions that have reduced shootings and homicides in cities by 30-60% — efforts that have never received the type of robust federal support that could help bring them to scale across the country.

As Congress continues to debate whether Black and Brown communities—those most impacted by the epidemic of gun violence—are worthy of these types of investments, there are immediate steps that cities, counties, and states can take at this moment. In coalition with over a hundred local and national gun violence prevention organizations around the country, we urged the White House to take several critical steps to fund peace in our cities including making American Rescue Plan (ARP) dollars eligible for supporting community-based violence intervention work. To its credit, the White House did just that and advised local jurisdictions that portions of the $350 billion in funds going directly to city, county, and state governments could be used to implement evidence-based programs to address community violence. Continue Reading