Governor to propose sustainable, ongoing funding for office, comprehensive gun safety reform initiatives in state budget

MADISON - Gov. Tony Evers today, joined by violence prevention advocates, local law enforcement, elected officials, students, and community members, signed Executive Order #254, creating a statewide Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention, and announced he is directing $10 million for the office to begin its work and administer grants supporting violence and gun violence prevention efforts statewide. The governor’s announcement today builds upon his and the Evers Administration’s long-term efforts to address crime, prevent gun violence, and bolster efforts keep kids, families, schools, and communities safe.

Gov. Evers today also announced his 2025-27 Executive Budget will provide his most robust and comprehensive gun safety reform efforts to date in addition to providing sustainable, ongoing state funding to make the Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention a permanent office in state government.

“Just weeks ago, we had a heartbreaking, deadly school shooting at Abundant Life Christian School here in Madison. As a father, a grandfather, and as governor, it is unthinkable that a kid and an educator woke up and went to school that morning and never came home. That should never happen. Not to any kid, not to any educator, not to any person or family—not in this state or anywhere else in this country,” said Gov. Evers today at a press conference in Madison.

“I have said from the beginning that I would never accept gun violence as a foregone reality or stop working to change it. Violence, including gun violence, is a statewide problem, with statewide consequences for people and families across our state,” Gov. Evers continued. “This issue has long deserved a comprehensive, statewide response, and that’s what we’ll be taking on with our new Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention.

“But our Office of Violence Prevention is just one part of the work ahead. While we’ve recently seen other violent crime rates decline, rates of gun deaths in Wisconsin have increased significantly over the last decade. Comprehensive, commonsense gun safety reform is a critical part of reducing crime, including gun violence, statewide, and this issue must be a shared priority that transcends politics and partisanship. We must work together to address the cycle of violence, prevent crime, and keep our kids, our families, our schools, and our communities safe,” concluded Gov. Evers.

Among other critical responsibilities, Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention as created by Gov. Evers will work to:

• Connect the dots between state and local government agencies, including law enforcement agencies, to ensure a whole-of-government approach to prevent violence, including gun violence statewide; 
• Support and provide technical assistance to local violence prevention and intervention efforts;  
• Administer and award grants to school districts, firearm dealers, law enforcement agencies, non-profits, and government agencies to support violence reduction and prevention initiatives;  
• Develop public education campaigns to promote safer communities; and  
• Identify opportunities to improve statewide policies or laws. 

Additionally, Gov. Evers is directing $10 million in federal funding to ensure the Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention can begin its important work without waiting for the conclusion of the biennial budget process while also supporting grants aimed at reducing crime, preventing violence, including gun violence, and efforts to improve community safety across Wisconsin:

• Through Gov. Evers’ directed investment in the Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention, the office will administer grants to eligible entities including school districts, law enforcement agencies, nonprofits, firearm dealers, and government agencies to support violence and gun violence reduction initiatives. 
• Applicable entities will be able to apply to receive funding for eligible expenses and initiatives aimed at interrupting, reducing, and preventing violence and promoting community safety. 
• Examples of eligible expenses for relevant entities will include but are not limited to: 
• Supporting multi-agency law enforcement investigations; 
• Using crime gun intelligence tools; 
• Implementing suicide prevention education to identify individuals in crisis, including at the point of sale for firearms; 
• Implementing or improving threat assessment training;  
• Promoting and administering safe storage and gun buyback programs;  
• Providing technical assistance and support to help design, implement, and/or staff evidence-based community policing, crime reduction initiatives, and gun violence crisis response teams;  
• Implementing or enhancing domestic violence prevention programs; 
• Implementing school-based programming, including suicide prevention and firearm safety training; and 
• Supporting mentoring and after-school programs and other efforts aimed at keeping kids out of trouble and out of harms way. 

More details and information about eligible entities, expenses, and application processes for the Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention’s statewide violence prevention grants will be forthcoming.

STATISTICS ON VIOLENCE AND GUN VIOLENCE IN WISCONSIN
Over the last six years, Gov. Evers has worked with dedicated advocates and organizations across the state to address the root causes of violence. According to data from the Wisconsin Department of Justice, violent crimes like homicide, robbery, and assault are down from just a few years ago across the state. Additionally, according to the Milwaukee Police Department, homicide rates in the city fell for the second year in a row.

However, over the last decade, the rate of gun deaths in Wisconsin has gotten worse. According to Everytown for Gun Safety, the rate of gun deaths has increased 54 percent from 2014 to 2023 in Wisconsin, compared to a 34 percent increase nationwide over that same time period. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that, as of 2020, firearms have been the leading cause of death for kids in America—surpassing car accidents and cancer—with gun death rates in this age group increasing by 106 percent over the last 11 years. In every year since 2019, there have been more mass shootings than days in the year, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.

Additionally, End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin also showed that in 2023 Wisconsin saw the second highest rates of domestic violence deaths in the state since they began tracking this data more than 20 years ago, 78 percent of which involved firearms.

Further, in 2022, there were more than 48,000 firearm-related deaths in America, the second-highest year on record, with more than half of those deaths being suicide. That’s true here in Wisconsin, too, where nearly 60 percent of all suicide deaths are firearm-related.

Gun violence does not just affect only the largest cities and urban areas in Wisconsin. A recent analysis on Gun Death in Wisconsin, firearm suicide rates have remained higher in rural Wisconsin compared to urban areas, and the majority of firearm deaths in rural areas of Wisconsin are suicide deaths.

As gun violence in particular continues to persist in communities across the state, especially in Wisconsin’s rural areas and communities, a commitment to comprehensive community violence prevention as well as robust investments in mental and behavioral health services, crime victim services, coupled with commonsense gun safety reform has never been more important.

BACKGROUND ON GOV. EVERS' EFFORTS TO REDUCE CRIME AND KEEP KIDS, FAMILIES, AND COMMUNITIES SAFE
Over his tenure as governor, Gov. Evers and his administration have worked to address the gun violence epidemic and have sought to enact commonsense gun safety reform to address these harrowing statistics. In October 2019, the governor called a special session of the Wisconsin State Legislature to address gun violence in the state of Wisconsin and proposed two critical proposals relating to universal background checks and extreme risk protection orders. Despite the fact that a majority of Wisconsinites, including gun owners, support the implementation of commonsense measures like universal background checks (79 percent) and extreme risk protection orders (81 percent), Republicans ignored the will of the people and refused to take up the governor’s special session bills.

Gov. Evers has also proposed commonsense community safety and gun safety measures in all three of the biennial budgets he has introduced to date. In his 2023-25 Executive Budget, the governor proposed:

• Making gun safes, barrel locks, and trigger locks sales tax exempt to encourage safe, secure, and responsible storage of firearms when they are not in use;
• Requiring, with certain exceptions, that any firearm transfers be done through federally licensed firearm dealers, including background checks conducted on recipients; and
• Creating an extreme risk protection injunction process similar to the existing domestic violence injunction for law enforcement and concerned loved ones to use where a court, after a hearing, may order an individual to refrain from possessing a firearm for up to one year if it finds by clear and convincing evidence that he or she is substantially likely to injure himself or herself or another by possessing a firearm. 

Republicans in the Wisconsin State Legislature removed these proposals in the biennial budget process and have largely declined to take action on commonsense gun safety measures or pass other meaningful investments to make Wisconsin’s communities safer. Nevertheless, since 2019, Gov. Evers and his administration have been working to keep Wisconsinites and local communities healthy and safe, including taking action to prevent gun violence through commonsense gun safety reforms and working to invest directly in violence prevention and intervention.

In recent years, Gov. Evers has directed more than $100 million of the state’s allocation of ARPA funds toward community safety and violence prevention efforts. In 2021, the governor announced an initial $45 million investment to address the root causes of violence by investing in programs and interventions being spearheaded by organizations already working in local communities, including investing $25 million into violence prevention efforts and $20 million to support victim services in Wisconsin, such as: 

• $6.6 million to the Medical College of Wisconsin’s (MCW) Violence Prevention Project, which is housed in their Comprehensive Injury Center. These funds are being used to support research, data collection, education, and community engagement efforts around violence prevention as a public health issue; 
• $10.4 million also to MCW’s Violence Prevention Project to administer a competitive grant process to support violence project efforts statewide. Ten communities and organizations were selected to receive these funds in June 2023.   
• $8 million to the City of Milwaukee’s Office of Violence Prevention to respond to the pandemic-related uptick in violence and trauma with projects that take a public health approach to violence prevention; and 
• $20 million to support Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) grant recipients, as the state has seen critical cuts to federal VOCA funding over the last several years and an increased need for services.  
• Gov. Evers later signed 2023 Wisconsin Act 241, which directed $10 million to support violence prevention and crime victim and survivor services, including providing funding for sexual assault victim services, domestic abuse grants, and child advocacy grants.  

To continue to build on these efforts to support safer communities, in March 2022, Gov. Evers announced an additional more than $50 million investment of ARPA funds in community safety and crime prevention initiatives, including:

• More than $19 million for a statewide law enforcement grant program that provided an allocation to every local and Tribal law enforcement agency in Wisconsin, enabling agencies to address the unique needs facing their communities, including training, recruitment bonuses, community policing needs, and technology investments;  
• $1 million for the Wisconsin Technical College System to support part-time police academy programs in Wisconsin;  
• Nearly $20 million to Milwaukee County and the city of Milwaukee for criminal justice system initiatives and community safety projects; and 
• More than $16 million toward reducing the pandemic-related backlog of criminal cases statewide. 

Gov. Evers has also signed multiple bills that improve on his administration’s ongoing efforts to prevent reckless driving and improve road safety in Wisconsin, including signing 2023 Wisconsin Act 1, which was the first bill enacted in the governor’s second term and aims to curb reckless driving by allowing counties and municipalities to enact ordinances authorizing law enforcement to impound a vehicle if its owner is cited for reckless driving and has a prior conviction for reckless driving and has not paid the imposed forfeiture for that offense. In May 2023, Gov. Evers also signed two bills to help address reckless driving and carjacking in the state by increasing penalties for both and creating a new “carjacking” section of the criminal code. Additionally, in December 2023, Gov. Evers signed 2023 Wisconsin Act 86, a bipartisan bill aimed at reducing reckless driving and improving road safety by expanding access to driver education. Finally, in March 2024, Gov. Evers signed 2023 Wisconsin Act 226, which increases the penalty for fleeing or attempting to elude an officer and creates a mandatory minimum sentence if it results in death or great bodily harm.

In addition to direct investments in community safety and violence prevention, Gov. Evers has also made addressing mental health a cornerstone issue of his administration. Having declared 2023 as the “Year of Mental Health” as part of his 2023-2025 biennial budget, Gov. Evers proposed approximately $500 million to expand access to mental and behavioral health services across Wisconsin. While a majority of Gov. Evers’ innovative proposals to address mental health were rejected by Republicans in the Legislature, the final budget signed into law by Gov. Evers included $30 million to continue funding for school-based mental health modeled on the governor’s “Get Kids Ahead” initiative, helping schools provide needed mental health services to their pupils through community partnerships, as well as directed $10 million to establish two crisis urgent care and observation centers for individuals in crisis and $200,000 to support farmer mental health assistance programming at the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. Gov. Evers has also previously directed more than $10 million to support veteran services in Wisconsin, including $4.5 million to support veteran mental health initiatives, such as access to community-based programs, emergency services, and peer support programs. The governor, most recently, awarded nine nonprofit organizations across the state $600,000 in funding through the Veteran Mental Health Community-Based Organization Grant program.

An online version of this release is available here.