Gun violence in the United States continued to decline significantly in 2024 — perhaps most pointedly in Philadelphia, where homicides fell more than 40 percent and shootings dropped to their lowest level in a decade. It’s a historic turnaround in a city in which, for two years in a row during the pandemic, gunfire claimed more than 500 lives annually.
These statistics should feel like welcome news, writes Philly engagement reporter Afea Tucker. But as the end of 2024 approached, the city experienced a particularly violent weekend — at least 25 people were shot, four fatally, over the course of three days — that served as a reminder that every shooting exacts a heavy toll. “Even as things began to feel less grim last year,” Tucker writes, “we are still in the thick of a national gun violence crisis.”