Budget cuts to gun violence prevention programs in the US.
The US government has cut more than half of all federal funding for gun violence prevention programs in the country.
The government is also cutting $158 million in grants to groups in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, according to the report.
Of the 145 Community Violence Intervention (CVI) grants worth more than $300 million awarded through the US Department of Justice, 69 were abruptly canceled in April, according to government data analyzed by Reuters.
The elimination of community violence intervention programs is part of a broader retrenchment at the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs, which canceled 365 grants worth $811 million in April, significantly impacting public safety and victim services programs.
A Justice Department official told Reuters that grants related to combating gun violence were eliminated because they no longer met program goals or agency priorities.
Thousands of grants from the Office of Justice Programs are being evaluated, the official said, and are being evaluated based on factors such as how well they support law enforcement and combat violent crime.
The report said 25 groups would be affected by the cuts.
The grants cover a wide range of gun violence prevention programs, such as training intervention teams to reduce tension and mediate conflicts, using social workers to connect people with services and jobs, and hospital programs for victims of gun violence.
Meanwhile, according to the US Gun Violence Archive, gun violence deaths in the United States increased by more than 50 percent from 2015 to the peak of the pandemic in 2021, reaching 21,383. Since then, fatal shootings have been on a downward trend, falling to 16,725 in 2024. Meanwhile, through May 2025, the number of deaths had fallen by 866 compared to the same period last year.