Just last week, Charlie Kirk was fatally shot in Utah while discussing gun violence in America. Hours later, a high school in Colorado became another tragic entry in the country’s grim record of school shootings. These two concurrent events forced a confrontation with a long-standing reality of American existence: the extensive gun violence in America is not a price of liberty, but a consequence of policy decisions.
Remarkably, overall crime rates are actually decreasing. While murders surged during the final year of the initial Trump Administration, they subsequently plummeted, falling by 11.6% in 2023 and an additional 15.8% in 2024. Violent crime, more broadly, has reached its lowest point in five decades. According to conventional public safety metrics, America is performing better than it has in many years.
Despite the decline in violent crime, the dramatic increase in mass shootings since the federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004, and the in , are profound causes for concern. Instead, we are left with haunting images of Kirk dying on stage, Minnesota legislators shot, children fleeing schools, and Americans murdered in public spaces.
Mass shootings represent a problem unique to the United States. While these incidents do not primarily drive national homicide rates, they deeply affect public consciousness because they attack the core of communal life. They instill a sense that every supermarket and classroom could become a crime scene.
Why do these shootings persist even as overall crime recedes? One contributing factor is the dramatic and continuous growth in the availability of increasingly lethal firearms. Following the in 2022, gun sales soared, while regulatory oversight weakened across most states. Unlike crime, which is cyclical, the supply of guns is cumulative. The United States is saturated with , and this stockpile does not diminish simply because the murder rate drops.
Politics offers another part of the explanation. Historically, deadly school shootings often spurred widespread public demand for stricter gun control. For years, this desire for reform was met with opposition from the powerful, organized gun lobby. However, the political landscape shifted after the at in Parkland, Fla., in 2018. Gun safety advocacy groups began establishing serious political operations. Our research indicates that since 2018, gun safety PACs have significantly escalated their efforts, mobilizing financial resources by up to 4,195% as elections approach.
This marks a remarkable shift. For decades, the gun safety movement lacked the financial capacity to convert public sentiment into political pressure. Today, organizations such as , , and are actively engaged in the nation’s most competitive congressional districts. The renewed vigor of gun safety PACs means that tragedy no longer elicits a one-sided response. Instead, a flood of money from both sides effectively neutralizes each other, leading to legislative stalemate rather than reform.
Nevertheless, the broader outlook remains grim. Other developed nations have responded to single catastrophic shootings by implementing laws that substantially reduced future risks; , , and saw mass killings become far less common. The United States has endured Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Parkland, Uvalde, yet our policies show minimal change.
The discrepancy between public opinion and political action is astonishing. Polls consistently reveal that most Americans support stricter gun laws. indicated that 66% favored banning high-capacity magazines, and large-capacity magazines. The reality is that most Americans do not own these weapons, and want or use them. , public health scholars, and legal academics, an assault weapons ban was identified as the single most effective measure among 20 policy options for reducing mass shootings.
Yet, even after the May 2022 shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo, Congress only managed to pass the limited Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
So, where do last week’s tragedies leave us? On one hand, the country is more secure from violent crime than at any point in the past 50 years. On the other hand, America is more vulnerable to spectacular, devastating acts of mass violence than any of its counterparts, and the ominous threat of politically motivated violence is deeply troubling. This paradox shapes how Americans perceive their own safety. Reductions in robbery or burglary do not erase the trauma of a single shooting spree.
Gun safety PACs must act now before momentum wanes. Their emergence reflects an understanding that data and outrage alone are insufficient. The lesson from the last quarter-century is that mass shootings in America do not automatically lead to change. All too often, they simply lead to the next mass shooting.
The nation faces a choice: whether to remain trapped in this deadly paradox of gun violence, where overall crime rates fall even as extraordinary firearm tragedies define our public life, or to finally act on what the majority of Americans already believe.
Until we bridge the gap between public opinion and policy, mass shootings will persist as the most distinctly American crime of all.