Shooting-free days decline in major US cities; new metric aims at building sustained periods of peace
Shooting-free days and similar metrics introduced in a new scientific publication provide a more expansive frame to assess progress on gun violence prevention.
Between 2015 and 2024, the total number of days without firearm shootings declined in all but one of the ten largest U.S. cities—pointing to the need to newly focus on building and sustaining periods of peace with zero shootings. A new study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the Columbia Scientific Union for the Reduction of Gun Violence (Columbia SURGE) makes a case for the use of shooting-free days (SFD) and related metrics in addition to traditional homicide counts because these new metrics are inclusive of prevention gains, the large number of people who are shot and do not die, and critically important stretches of peace.
The study is the first to calculate SFDs and related metrics across major U.S. cities, and is published in JAMA Health Forum.
“Like ‘injury-free days’ used in workplace safety programs to recognize stretches of time without accidents, these metrics capture the number of days in a year when shooting incidents do not occur,” says study first author Charles Branas, PhD, Gelman Professor and chair of Epidemiology and founding member of SURGE. “By reframing the conversation from the absence of safety to the presence of safety, these metrics may offer a valuable approach to identify where and when interventions are effective, motivate communities, and guide policy toward sustaining longer periods without firearm violence in U.S. cities.”
The researchers introduce four novel metrics: shooting-free days (SFDs), shooting death–free days (SDFDs), consecutive shooting–free days (CSFDs), and multiple shooting–free days (MSFDs).
Specific findings:
- San Diego consistently exhibited the highest numbers of days across all four metrics, whereas Chicago consistently had the lowest. Rankings for the other cities were as follows: Phoenix (2), Jacksonville (3), San Antonio (4), Dallas-Fort Worth (5), Houston (6), New York City (7), Los Angeles (8), Philadelphia (9).
- There was a significant downward trend in all metrics, indicating overall growth in firearm violence over the study decade. This included a noteworthy pullback over time corresponding with the surge in firearm violence during the pandemic.
- Jacksonville was the only city to show significant improvement in one metric over time. Phoenix and Dallas–Fort Worth showed significant declines across all four shooting-free metrics, an indicator of decreased progress in preventing firearm violence for those cities.
- The findings were similar when calculated to account for the city’s population size. San Diego again showed the highest mean annual SFD rate, and Chicago the lowest. Jacksonville had the highest average annual SDFD rate; New York had the lowest SDFD rate, and Chicago had the lowest MSFD rate. San Diego had the highest average annual CSFD rate, and Chicago had the lowest.
The researchers say the relative success of cities like San Diego and Jacksonville highlights the potential for identifying protective conditions that may inform similar successes in cities with fewer SFDs. “Instead of focusing on failures, these metrics highlight periods of success and could serve as the basis for creating meaningful goals to extend and sustain those successes. They can also offer near real-time evidence of intervention effectiveness at the neighborhood or city level,” Branas says.
The researchers used the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a publicly available database operated by an independent, nonprofit research organization that tracks firearm-related incidents across the US, to analyze firearm injuries in 10 U.S. cities from January 1, 2015, through December 31, 2024. The GVA compiles real-time data on fatal, nonfatal, intentional, and unintentional shootings through automated queries and extensive manual research from more than 7,500 sources, including local and state police, media outlets, government reports, and other public records.
The authors note that SFD and the other metrics do not directly capture non-shooting forms of firearm-related harm, broader community trauma, or the long-term economic consequences of firearm violence. Studies of the new metrics using city poverty and sociodemographic indicators, along with other inferential and longitudinal statistical analyses, could be conducted in the future.
Additional authors include Isbah Plumber, Riley Bennett, and Olivia Landes—all with Columbia Mailman School and Columbia SURGE.
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Journal
JAMA Health Forum
Method of Research
Observational study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Shooting-Free Days as a New Metric of Success in Reducing Firearm Violence
Article Publication Date
13-Mar-2026
Thoughts don’t kill people, but study suggests options for keeping guns from doing so
Seven percent of Americans have thought of shooting someone, but many either told someone, are open to giving their gun to someone for safekeeping, or didn’t have a firearm at the time
Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan
Millions of Americans have thought about shooting someone, a new University of Michigan study finds. And if they didn’t already own a firearm, some of them have thought about getting one to make their thoughts a reality.
Over 7% of adults in the United States say that at some time in their life, they have thought about shooting someone else. That percentage corresponds to 19.4 million people.
Over 3%, or about 8.7 million adults, said they have thought of shooting someone in the last year.
Firearm owners were no more likely to have had these thoughts than those who don’t own firearms, according to the findings published in the journal JAMA Network Open and based on a nationally representative survey.
But 8% of individuals who had thought of shooting someone had brought a firearm to a specific place to potentially carry out a shooting.
Among non-firearm owners, 21% of those with thoughts of shooting someone said they had thought of getting a firearm to carry out their thoughts.
Whether or not someone has access to a firearm, the study points to important opportunities for keeping thoughts from turning into potentially deadly actions.
For example, 21% of those who had thoughts of shooting someone told another person what they were thinking – potentially creating an opportunity for intervention before anyone could be harmed.
And while only 7% of those with thoughts of shooting someone said they had given their gun to someone else for safekeeping, another 21% said they would consider doing so in future.
Brian Hicks, Ph.D., the psychologist and Professor of Psychiatry at the U-M Medical School who led the study, says the findings illustrate the scope of the danger of firearm violence, and the need to determine if people who have these thoughts are a high risk for acting on them.
In Michigan and 20 other states, extreme risk protection order laws, sometimes called “red flag” laws, provide a judicial procedure for temporary removal of firearms from people at high risk of harming themselves or others, based on their behaviors, statements or writings.
Hicks also notes that the findings are consistent with policy efforts to implement background checks and waiting periods for firearm purchases to prevent suicides and homicides among those acting on impulse.
“While most people who these thoughts don’t act on them, the number is so high that the small proportion who do act turns into tens of thousands of fatal and nonfatal firearm injuries each year,” he said.
“That does not include the toll of self-harm with firearms, which accounts for over half of firearm-related deaths. The more we can understand factors that can reduce risk, the better.”
Who’s having thoughts about shooting someone, and about whom
Hicks and coauthor Mark Ilgen, Ph.D., continue to study data from the survey of more than 7,000 adults, called the National Firearms, Alcohol, Cannabis, and Suicide Survey.
The new paper contains their initial analysis of some of the demographic factors that were associated with thoughts of shooting another person.
Men were far more likely than women to have such thoughts. So were people of younger age, people who identified their race or ethnicity as Black, those living in Midwestern states and those living in urban areas. Hicks notes that Black Americans are six times more likely to be homicide victims than white Americans.
Those with household incomes under $50,000 were more likely to have had thoughts of shooting someone in the past year.
There were no significant differences by political ideology.
Asked who they had thought of shooting, 51% said an enemy, while 25% said someone they didn’t know such as a stranger they had a conflict with or people in a public place, 14% said a government official or employee, 10% said a family member, 10% said a former spouse or romantic partner, 9% said a current spouse or romantic partner, and smaller percentages gave other answers. Respondents could give multiple answers.
The survey was conducted in 2025 in English and online, potentially limiting its applicability to populations with limited English proficiency or Internet access.
Hicks notes that future analyses will examine other factors that might be related to thoughts of shooting others such as mental health and substance use problems, and other firearm behaviors such as storage practices, gun carrying, and risky behaviors such as firing a gun after using alcohol or drugs.
The survey was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (MH137443-01, MH135466-01). The U-M Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention has provided additional support for the survey and data analysis.
Hicks and Ilgen are members of the U-M Addiction Center and Eisenberg Family Depression Center. Ilgen is also a member of the firearm institute and the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, and the VA Center for Clinical Management Research at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.
Reference: Prevalence of Thoughts of Shooting Others Among US Adults, JAMA Network Open, DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.0734
Accompanying commentary by Elizabeth Pino, Ph.D., Boston Medical Center: Thoughts About Shooting Others and Preventing Firearm Assaults—From Violent Ideation to Prevention
Learn more about recently enacted Michigan’s firearm laws and assistance for communities and organizations to implement them at mflip.org
Journal
JAMA Network Open
Method of Research
Survey
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Prevalence of Thoughts of Shooting Others Among US Adults
Article Publication Date
17-Mar-2026
No comments:
Post a Comment