Johns Hopkins guide lists 10 ways Wisconsin could reduce gun violence

What happened

Wisconsin Watch reported, in a story by Devin Blake of Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, that a new Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions guide recommends 10 policy changes to reduce gun violence in Wisconsin. Lead author Ethan Bartlett told NNS that three could matter most in Milwaukee and similar communities. Two are licensing measures, one for gun buyers and a state license for gun dealers. The third is steady funding for community violence intervention. According to the report, Wisconsin requires neither license today.

Buyers would complete live-fire safety training, submit fingerprints, pass a background check and apply in person, Wisconsin Watch reported. The guide links laws like this to an 11% drop in firearm homicides in 136 large urban counties. Milwaukee County Supervisor Justin Bielinski broadly supports the guide, but he told NNS that buyer licensing could fall hardest on lower-income residents and people of color in heavily policed neighborhoods. The story included no comment from gun owners’ groups.

The outlet quoted Bridget Whitaker, who leads the Milwaukee nonprofit Safe & Sound: “Trust doesn’t operate on a grant cycle.” The guide calls for writing Wisconsin’s Office of Violence Prevention into state law. According to Wisconsin Watch, Gov. Tony Evers created the office by executive order in January 2025 with $10 million in federal money, but his plan to make it permanent was left out of the final budget. Bielinski called hiring more violence interrupters “highly unrealistic given current budgetary circumstances.”

As of Oct. 8, Wisconsin Watch reported, Milwaukee had recorded 84 homicides and 325 nonfatal shootings, both down more than 20% from the same period in 2025, according to police data.

Our reflection

Milwaukee’s numbers are moving the right way, and 84 people were still killed in the city by early October. Each of those families will set the Thanksgiving table one short.

Whitaker’s sentence about grant cycles is the one I can’t put down. Picture a 16-year-old who finally lets an outreach worker in. He answers the calls and starts to believe someone is staying. Then the money runs out and the worker is gone by spring. If his father already walked out, that is one more grown man who left, and the old lesson gets louder: don’t trust anybody who says they’re here for you.

It would be easy to blame lawmakers and stop there. The harder truth sits closer. Most of us want our giving to show results by December. We fund what photographs well and get restless with work that looks like nothing from outside: a call at 1 a.m., a ride to court, a cousin talked out of retaliating, a plate of food after a funeral. That impatience decides some young people are worth a season and no more.

God does not work on a grant cycle. When Jeremiah wrote to the exiles in Babylon, they wanted a fast way home. He told them to plant gardens and seek the welfare of the city they were stuck in, because they would be there seventy years. Then the Word became flesh and lived among us, and he spent most of his life in a town people sneered at. On the night of his arrest, everyone who loved him ran. He stayed, all the way to the cross. After Peter denied him, the risen Christ cooked him breakfast on a beach and gave him work to do. Grace is presence that outlasts our failure.

Violence intervention runs on that logic. Trusted people from the neighborhood step into conflicts before they become funerals, then stay with the young people involved. Wisconsin Watch did not credit Milwaukee’s drop in shootings to any one program, and we won’t either. Christians will land in different places on licensing, and Bielinski’s warning about heavily policed neighborhoods deserves a real hearing. Steady support for the people standing between a young man and a trigger should not divide the church. It is the bet We The Revolt has made in its Miami, Chicago and Houston hubs. We try to reach young people at first contact, before a record exists. Then we stay with them through re-entry.

So this week, do something slow. Ask your county and state leaders whether violence prevention near you is funded for one year or several. If you can give, give monthly, because a steady gift is what lets a mentor stay.

But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Jeremiah 29:7

Source: Wisconsin Watch, “New guide identifies policies that could reduce gun violence in Wisconsin”