This 20-minute video tells us 80% of murders committed with a gun arise from fights or arguments that escalated. The common explanation of some sort of rational cost benefit decision such as shooting someone for revenge or in a robbery or rape. Most shooting occur in short burst of emotion.
As I have said before a good problem statement is a necessity (see also here). The above information allows us to come up with alternate solutions. The one most surprising was that cleaning up empty lots by trimming the grass, removing needles, and broken glass resulted in a drop in “gun violence” by nearly 30%. No increased policing, not getting people out of poverty, just a small change in their physical environment.
The reason this works is that it increases the number of the people outdoors and interacting with each other. This increases the likelihood of someone intervening during an escalation. Similarly better street lighting also reduces interpersonal violence.
See also this book Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence: Ludwig, Jens.
Seattle City Councilmember Rivera has started pushing for a violence reduction strategy here that’s worked well in several east coast cities:
https://council.seattle.gov/2026/06/08/councilmember-rivera-convenes-city-leaders-to-learn-about-gun-violence-reduction-approach-that-has-succeeded-in-other-us-cities/
It primarily revolves around the understanding that 80-90% of gun violence is committed by a very small portion of the population, in the case of Seattle they estimate around 700 people. In Philadelphia, where the technique originated, they first identified the primary offenders (which is not hard) and then focused carrot and stick efforts on them: offer them services and support to get them out of whatever life situation has them needing to use violence, and if that doesn’t work, lock them up. By focusing efforts on the known problem people rather than just statistics, and making it clear those problem are now under a microscope, they seem to get really good results. Which seems completely obvious, but most police departments and social service departments are set up to be reactive not proactive, so this kind of system requires some re-working of SOP.
And none of it has anything to do with gun control, or even guns as a particular focus of the effort, which makes it a lot easier to get broad support in the community. Ironically the folks most resistant to the new system are the community groups who have a vested interest in keeping themselves as the primary interface with troublemakers (the designers of the system even point this out as the harder work to getting the program successful). Sounds like the symposium went well, though, and we may be able to beat back some of the folks who want the status quo.