Shootings hit a decade low in Q3 2026, and 9,790 people have still died this year

What happened

Shootings across the United States kept falling steeply through the first nine months of 2026, according to a quarterly analysis The Trace published Monday. Aaron Mendelson wrote it for the outlet’s Gun Violence Data Hub. Citing the Gun Violence Archive, The Trace reported that 9,790 people were killed and 18,199 were injured in shootings through three quarters. The third quarter alone recorded 3,301 shooting deaths, which The Trace called “the lowest figure in over a decade of GVA data.”

The totals are still heavy. People died in shootings in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., The Trace reported, and the deadliest day of the year so far was July 5, when 88 people were shot and killed. The outlet described the numbers as steep declines from recent years and “a continuation in a historic downward trend in gun violence.” According to The Trace, California, Florida, New Jersey and Nebraska are among the states with their lowest shooting totals since 2015. Some states with smaller numbers went the other way: The Trace reported that Connecticut and Massachusetts saw increases over 2025, and so did Alaska.

The Trace also reported a modest rise in gun sales. Virginia and Rhode Island each had legislation restricting gun purchases signed this year, the outlet noted, and Connecticut did as well. The Trace said the quarter brought new attention to community violence intervention. It also pointed to a wave of reporting on shootings near schools and to new research on guns and protests. The part of The Trace’s analysis we could review does not credit the decline to any one policy or program.

Our reflection

Three thousand three hundred and one is a lower number. It is also 3,301 phone calls that came in the middle of the night over three months, and a mother somewhere who will never care what the trend line did. Then there are the 18,199 people who were shot and lived, and who now carry it in their bodies and in the way they check every car that slows down. July 5 was the day after the fireworks. Eighty-eight people were killed that day.

Good news brings its own temptation. When the line on the chart drops, our attention tends to drop with it. Relief turns into numbness quickly, and if we are honest, a lot of us only ever felt this crisis when it got close to our own zip code. That is a problem in the heart before it is a problem in policy. Jesus said the anger we carry is already murder in seed form (Matthew 5:21 to 22). So the young man holding a gun and the churchgoer who has quietly written him off share a root, and Christ went to the cross for both of them.

Look at Jesus outside the tomb of Lazarus. He knew he was minutes away from calling his friend out alive, and he wept anyway (John 11:35). The resurrection he was about to bring did not cancel his grief over the death in front of him. He is also the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine and goes after the one (Luke 15:4). A falling count means more of the ninety-nine made it home. He is still out in the dark looking for the one who didn’t.

Who is out there at 2 a.m.

Community violence intervention is plain, hard work. Interrupters and credible messengers, many of them people who once lived the life, step into a beef before it becomes a shooting. Some sit at hospital bedsides so that one shooting does not turn into three. The Trace’s numbers do not tell us how much of this decline belongs to them, and we will not claim it does. What we do know is that a chart cannot talk a sixteen-year-old down. A person who knows his name can.

That is the work our JCVI teams are built for. Miami has one. So do Chicago and Houston. The job is reaching a young person at first contact, before a record exists, and staying with him through re-entry. Zechariah pictured city streets full of boys and girls at play. We measure progress by that picture, and by whether a kid can walk to the corner store without doing the math first.

Here is our worry. Lower numbers can tempt budget writers and donors to call the job finished, and that is exactly the wrong moment to walk away from what is working. This week, put your prayers and your money behind the peacemakers who are keeping that line moving down.

And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.

Zechariah 8:5

Source: The Trace, “By the Numbers: Gun Violence in Q3 2026”