Shooting-Free Days Decline in Major U.S. Cities; A New Focus on Building Sustained Periods of Peace Is Needed

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.