California officials tout historic drop in violence as killings fall to record low

California officials are touting a historic three-year decrease in homicides and gun violence that has led to the state’s lowest number of killings on record.

The number of homicides in California decreased by 35% between 2022 and 2024, with 2,304 deaths reported in 2022 and 1,768 in 2024, according data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The dip in homicides was most pronounced for teenage and young adult Black and Latino males, who have historically faced the highest risk of being killed or injured by gunshot wounds. Suicides, the most common type of gun deaths, also fell to record lows, according to the report.

California officials say the decrease is the result of the state’s strict gun policies, increased use of emergency risk protection orders and gun violence restraining orders–also known as red-flag laws – and investments in violence prevention programs that seek to reach the people who make up the majority of the state’s gunshot-wound victims and perpetrators.

“This progress didn’t happen by accident; it wasn’t dumb luck or happenstance. It wasn’t inevitable,” the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, said at a press conference on Tuesday. “It is the result of strong gun safety laws, firearm industry oversight and gun reforms. And historic recent investments in gun violence prevention.”

California’s decline is a part of a larger national decrease in killings across the US, with cities across the country seeing large declines.

California’s office of gun violence prevention examined the trends, and on Tuesday released its findings on gun violence dynamics in the state, and the outstanding challenges in tackling persistent issues like domestic violence and racial disparities among gunshot wound victims.

The report paints a complicated picture on the safety of the people who have long faced the highest risk of being on either side of a shooting – Black and Latino men and teen boys.

On one hand, the decrease in killings was most pronounced among this demographic, with the number of Black and Latino male homicide victims decreasing 48% and 52% respectively.

Despite the decrease, stubborn trends persist. Of the more than 10,700 people who were shot and injured between 2022-24, nearly 90% were male and about 75% were Black, Latino and in their 20s.

Most women who are killed in the state, as in the rest of the US, die as the result of domestic violence, the report states. And though the overall numbers of homicides in California are at their lowest rate since the state began keeping track in 1968, the number of domestic violence homicides in that same year was 21% higher than it was in 2014.

Like male victims of homicide, Black and Latina women are also overrepresented among women who are killed, the report shows. For white women the rate was 8% higher in 2024 than a decade earlier, Latina women saw a 27% jump, and there was a 61% increase for Black women, according to the report.