On April 8, 2025, Resolve Philly and The Trace hosted a roundtable discussion about gun violence in response to the plummeting rates of shootings and shooting deaths that the city has seen over the past two years. The questions were developed by Resolve Philly editors, our Info Hub Captains, and The Trace, a national newsroom that covers gun violence, legislation, and solutions. Roughly 20 community members, including nonprofit leaders, therapists, police chaplains, and shooting victims, gathered to take part. An excerpt of our conversation follows, edited for length and clarity.

Afea Tucker (The Trace): The rates of gun violence have pretty dramatically declined throughout 2024. To date, we’re looking at close to a 26% decline in homicides. But is it really resonating? Are you feeling safer in your neighborhoods? How do you feel when you see news reports that say gun violence is down, crime is down, we’re going in the right direction?

Dante L. (Belmont): It don’t make me feel one way or another. The same way for me, that it is now, it’s always been this way. So if they say it’s 25% down, if I’m used to 3 or 4 people I know a year getting killed, I’m still seeing 3 or 4 people a year getting killed. So the numbers in my opinion is what gets papers sold, what gets people funded, all the stuff that don’t really matter. But to the youngster across the street, he don’t give a crap about the data, or none of that stuff. He wanna hear what do you got for me.

Imani B. (West Philadelphia): Numbers are not always accurate. So I just don’t believe, because data shows up, well where did the data come from? A lot of crime isn’t reported. A lot of people get shot and a lot of crime goes unreported. It’s still the same. Only there’s more young people that are doing more killing, that’s the difference now.

Shanayah W. (Germantown): It’s important to define what safe is. Each person has a different understanding of what safe is. Especially living in Philadelphia, someone safe in West Philly is not someone safe in South Philly. When we live in these dangerous environments, it’s like this is what I’m used to, it is what it is.

Sean S. (Mill Creek): It’s hard to feel safe when you’re in survival mode. So I don’t think we really know what safety is because if you’re constantly in survival mode you don’t have time for safety. But the way I judge it is, I might not need a gun everywhere I go. I feel like it is getting a little bit better, I feel like it’s more safe places to go, and I can only look at it from the point of view of going out. When you go out on a Friday or Saturday night, you can go to a little more places now without feeling like you need a weapon. A couple years ago, you didn’t even wanna go.

Akhenaton M. (West Philadelphia): We’re living in trauma. So despite the fact that the numbers are going down, I think that for people to really answer that with more conviction, there has to be something that’s taken place over a period of time. The numbers have to consistently go down in order for us to feel what’s referred to as being safe. Because safe is a subjective term.

Mensah Dean (The Trace): Our mayor says there are a number of reasons why the numbers are going down. They flooded the zone [with police] in some of the highest crime areas, they’ve created some programs like Group Violence Intervention, they’ve given a lot of money to grassroots organizations to work with young men, mostly to try to steer them away from the streets. I would like to hear from you, what are your solutions? What is the thing that you would love to see the city doing to keep the numbers going down and to spread the feeling of real safety in the community?

Elbert C. (South Philadelphia): These young boys need some oldheads. These oldheads need to come out here and be on the corner, they ain’t got to referee, just let them see.

Imani B. (West Philadelphia): Untreated childhood trauma creates a chaotic adult. One of the things I do see across the city, is there’s more access to behavioral health services for people to go to for help.

Akhenaton M. (West Philadelphia): The lack of constructive leisure activities is a big contributing factor with all this violence. And I say that because it’s not enough to just open up a recreation center, throw out some balls and say go play. We have to actively engage. That’s two different things. If I get out there and play with you, that’s where the lessons come in. That’s where you’re telling me about what’s going on out there, that’s where you’re telling me about the problems you’re having.

Maleka J. (West Philadelphia): I feel like some of the therapists need to be the young people who really are already being therapists having conversations with one another. But they don’t have the money to go to school, they don’t have the resources to go to school, nobody’s bringing the education to them. I’m gonna say around 35 and under, because 14-year-olds ain’t trying to hear what I’m talking about, so I always have to bring in younger people.

Afea Tucker (The Trace): What needs to happen to turn things around?

Daisie C. (Kensington): There’s gotta be a way to make sure that the resources come through the people who have been in Kensington and neighborhoods like Kensington their whole lives. We know what we’re doing, we know what needs to be done. We have seen literal hell, we’ve lived it. But instead of the funds going through those little organizations and people like that, they’re going through massive places where our neighborhoods aren’t seeing a cent of it.

John D. (South Philadelphia): I’m the president of Dickinson Square West Civic Association. I’ve been trying to create a mindset to combat gun violence. Our mindset is, we’re trying to get the kids and the adults and everybody to just create accountability for their community. So in doing that, we have multiple street cleanings, we’re doing multiple food giveaways, and we also created a reading program where we pay the kids $10 to come and read. I have to have the adults come there with them, and your job is to learn from these kids. Nobody can get solutions, nobody can’t learn nothing until they get accountability for their street and their corner.

Imani B. (West Philadelphia): What the issue is, is what’s going on in the home, what’s being modeled in the home. Parents take up for their children, and they know they’re out there doing stuff. We have to model that behavior. What can I do about the guy that killed my son? He’s in jail. But my children have to see me be self-regulated and not come from a place of anger or emotion. I have to model my behavior positively so they can look at me and make good decisions because young people watch us.

Cass G. (Mill Creek): One thing you can say that a solution is, is minimum wage being $15 an hour. Right now, we really need $20 minimum wage, but we never got to the $15 that we’ve been talking about. Parents have to work three and four jobs, and pay for transportation and childcare, just to make ends meet, while their kids are at home, or maybe they’re not at home.

Mensah Dean (The Trace): This question is for the Black folks. Black folks are 45% of Philadelphia’s population. We are, every year, about 80% of those who get shot. How does that make you feel and what are your thoughts on why that is, and any thoughts on what we can do to reverse that reality.

Dante L. (Belmont): How it makes me feel is ridiculous. How we can change it is combat that with statistics. It’s proven that if you clean and green vacant lots, it’s a reduction in gun crime, in depression, and all of that stuff. So we take it one block at a time. Start taking back these vacant lots.

Maleka J. (West Philadelphia): Get the therapists to our young people. Get to the root.

Akhenaton M. (West Philadelphia): It makes me feel sad. We can start by just speaking with one another. I’ve walked down the street on plenty of occasions and I’ve spoken to people, and they just look at me like I’m crazy and keep going. It starts there.

Derrick P. (Mantua): Enough Black people don’t tell each other, or Black men, that we love one another. We’re uncomfortable with saying that and expressing ourselves in that way.

Mike W. (Mantua): One thing I haven’t heard tonight is about how the guns get into our community. When we were coming up back in the 60s and 70s it was hard to get a gun, almost impossible. So it’s not a surprise that those guns are infiltrating our community because regentrification has done a good job at taking our homes, moving us out, taking our resources and not letting us have any opportunity.

Cass G. (Mill Creek): I feel really disturbed. We gotta find a way to teach our young people economics, and economics meaning that there’s a price tag on their lives and on their backs. Whole systems are built around them coming to the jail for economic reasons to keep those prisons working. They’re either gonna give money there, or they’re gonna give money to the funeral home. We need to figure out how to educate them so that they know that it’s real, and it’s not glamorized. 

Imani B. (West Philadelphia): Racism and self-hate. Since our inception in this country, Black people have been told you are inferior, you are nothing. Young people know that their skin is less valuable than white people’s skin. So we have self-hate issues.

Shanayah W. (Germantown): All the solutions that we came up with in this room, we could put our own framework together on paper, and literally go to Council and say, look at this resolution that we have, we’re gonna campaign for this resolution.

Afea Tucker (The Trace): What does a Philadelphia without gun violence look like to you?

Doug P. (West Philadelphia): A dream.

Tiyonna A. (Mantua): Magical, because the city is already beautiful, but people don’t realize it because every day you turn on the news we’re always confronted with this person died or this person died.

Trae P. (Mantua): Paradise. I have a ball in this city, I love my city. That’s it.

Mike W. (Mantua): Utopia.

Derrick P. (Mantua): That’s achievable. It’s possible, but it starts with us. It can be as many programs and all of that, but it starts in your home. It’s restoring that village that we once was raised in. You have your grandmothers, and your elders and your family that know, that you can go and talk to. I just think that a lot more parents need to be involved. We have to stop trying to be our kids’ friends, and be a parent to them, hold them accountable, and we’ll be accountable, and we can get closer to that Philly that we’re looking and hoping and praying that this could be.