Every day, more than 500 people die from armed violence around the world — and every one of those deaths is preventable. We are a coalition of survivors, families, researchers, faith leaders, city officials and young organizers turning grief into policy, and policy into safer streets. This is not a slogan. It is a measurable, achievable plan.
We Can End Gun Violence began as a small circle of families in the aftermath of a mass shooting that never should have happened. We were told that nothing would change, that politics were too divided, that this was simply the price of living in a modern society. We refused that answer — and we have spent every year since turning refusal into infrastructure.
Today we operate as a distributed coalition working across four continents. Our researchers map firearm trafficking corridors. Our organizers sit with city councils drafting safe-storage ordinances. Our survivor networks provide trauma support where formal services are absent. Our policy team translates local wins into national templates that other communities can copy, adapt and improve.
We do not see gun violence as an isolated crime problem. It is the intersection of poverty, untreated trauma, easy access to lethal means, and a society that has normalized catastrophe. That is why our work is intentionally multidisciplinary — legal, medical, educational, economic and deeply personal. We work with hospital-based violence intervention teams, school districts, faith communities, employers and grieving parents, because no single sector can solve this alone.
Our commitment is simple and unglamorous: measure honestly, act locally, share everything we learn, and never let a community carry the weight of prevention by themselves. If a strategy saves one life in one neighbourhood, it deserves to be studied, funded and replicated everywhere. That is how a movement becomes a norm, and how a norm becomes the end of an epidemic.
Every campaign we launch sits on top of a rigorous framework. We don't chase headlines — we build systems that outlast the news cycle.
Most shootings are the visible end of a long, predictable chain: a dispute, a lost job, a mental-health crisis, a gun in the wrong room. We partner with hospitals, schools and community mediators to intervene at the earliest inflection points — the hours where a hot conflict becomes a cold funeral.
Background checks, waiting periods, safe-storage mandates, extreme-risk protection orders, red-flag petitions — the science on these tools is overwhelming. We draft model legislation, coach local advocates through hearings, and publicize the results whenever a state or city chooses safety.
Firearm injury research was frozen for decades by federal funding bans. We help fill that vacuum with open datasets, community-led surveys, hospital reporting and machine-readable maps of trafficking corridors — because you cannot fix what you refuse to count.
Survivors, siblings, paramedics, teachers, neighbours — trauma radiates outward long after a shooting leaves the front page. We fund grief circles, hospital-linked peer support, and long-term counselling so that the wound does not become the next headline.
We are proud of the wins below — and painfully aware of how much remains. Numbers are audited annually by our partner academic institutions.
Reduction in firearm homicides in partner cities applying our full intervention package since 2019.
Survivors and family members matched with peer support and trauma-informed counselling.
Local ordinances passed or strengthened with our drafting and organizing support.
Youth trained as community violence interrupters across 42 countries.
Every one of these is open-source. Take the playbook, adapt it to your city, and we will help you launch it.
When a young person arrives at an emergency room with a gunshot wound, the risk of retaliation peaks within 72 hours. Our teams place trained crisis workers directly in trauma wards to offer a way out before the cycle repeats.
We help schools move past lockdown drills into genuine safety planning — threat assessment, restorative discipline, student-led climate surveys and confidential reporting channels that students trust.
Our legal team drafts and peer-reviews firearm-safety statutes that survive constitutional challenge, then packages them in plain language so residents can testify confidently at their own city halls.
A 10-week paid training program that turns credible messengers — people with lived experience of the streets — into professional practitioners of de-escalation, mediation and case management.
We aggregate fragmented datasets into a single open portal: firearm injuries, trafficking seizures, licensing denials, and hot-spot maps accurate down to the census block, refreshed monthly.
Survivors and affected families receive free, long-term support: therapy, peer circles, memorial assistance, and help navigating insurance, courtrooms and a system not designed for them.
Field reports, policy victories, research findings and stories from the communities we serve.
Whether you are a survivor, a researcher, a parent, a mayor or simply someone who refuses to look away — there is a role for you here. Start with a pledge, a donation, or a conversation in your own neighbourhood.
Our partnership team responds to every serious inquiry within two working days.
We work with local governments, universities, school districts, hospitals, faith networks and survivor organizations. If your community is ready to build a prevention plan, we are ready to help.