Shooting-Free Days as a New Metric of Success in Reducing Firearm Violence

Are newly developed metrics—shooting-free days (SFDs), shooting death–free days (SDFDs), consecutive shooting–free days (CSFDs), and multiple shooting–free days (MSFDs)—feasible to compute across major US cities, and what do they show about trends from 2015 through 2024?In a multicity, repeated cross-sectional time-series of the 10 largest US cities using Gun Violence Archive data, San Diego, California, had the highest yearly average of SFDs, SDFDs, and MSFDs, and Chicago, Illinois, had the lowest. Pooled across cities, each of the 4 shooting-free day metrics significantly worsened over the study decade. Phoenix, Arizona, and Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas, had significant declines in all 4 metric, whereas Jacksonville, Florida, significantly improved in MSFDs over the study decade.These novel metrics varied widely across cities and changed significantly over time, offering actionable indicators to track success, reframe public discourse, and set more ambitious goals for firearm violence prevention.

Corresponding Author: Charles C. Branas, PhD, Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, 722 W 168th St, Ste 1508, New York, NY 10032 (c.branas@columbia.edu).

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