An NRA-ILA alert last month highlighted the ways in which President Donald Trump has used his office to safeguard our rights protected under the Second Amendment. Another important development has just come to our attention, on the allocation of federal grant funds.
The Trump administration has already cut millions in grants for certain “gun violence prevention programs,” the majority of which had been set up under the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), the gun control law passed under Joe Biden. The grants were part of the Community-Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative (CVIPI), administered through the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs (OJP) and funded “through dedicated resources from the [BSCA].” A 2024 White House fact sheet refers to “$1.5 billion in mandatory funding to support Community Violence Intervention (CVI) programs at DOJ over the next 10 years.”
DOJ officials explained that the cuts concerned programs “that do not align with the administration’s priorities,” with new funding priorities focusing on “law enforcement operations, combating violent crime, protecting American children, supporting American victims of trafficking and sexual assault, and promoting coordination of law enforcement efforts at all levels of government.”
The loss of funding resulted in a lawsuit against the Trump administration brought by five non-profit entities, lead by the progressive Vera Institute of Justice, alleging the cuts were unconstitutional, illegal, and arbitrary and capricious. In July, an Obama-appointed judge of the federal district court for the District of Columbia denied injunctive relief and granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss, ruling that the plaintiffs failed to show the court had jurisdiction over their arbitrary and capricious claim and failed “to demonstrate a violation of any constitutional right or protection.”
The other shoe on these grants has just dropped.
The Trump administration has reportedly retooled the eligibility criteria and focus for these grants going forward. Eligibility to apply for an estimated $34 million in grant money has changed to exclude community-based organizations and non-profit applicants. The focus is more explicitly on “supporting law enforcement efforts to reduce violent crime and improv[ing] police-community relations” through law enforcement officer and related personnel hiring, equipment purchases that specifically support violence prevention and intervention, youth violence intervention programs, and generally by “increasing the capacity of local government, law enforcement, and the criminal justice system to coordinate comprehensive crime reduction strategies.”
Grant applicants are required to identify projects designed to advance the funding priorities, with the first two being “[d]irectly supporting law enforcement operations (including immigration law enforcement operations)” and “[c]ombatting violent crime.” “Unallowable Uses of Funds” include, explicitly, “any program or activity, at any tier that, directly or indirectly, violates (or promotes or facilitates the violation of) federal immigration law … or impedes or hinders the enforcement of federal immigration law,” and “any program or activity, at any tier that violates any applicable Federal civil rights or nondiscrimination law.”
Prior NRA-ILA alerts have exposed the questionable utility of some community-based “violence interrupter” programs (here and here); a Guardian article recently described the result of the CVIPI grant cuts on one community as including the apparent hardship of “residents los[ing] the presence of people who walk through their neighborhoods daily to check the vibe in the area.” For gun rights supporters, though, the changes hopefully mean that nonprofits and community groups associated with advocating gun control will be less likely to do it at the expense of the American taxpayer and that real progress can occur on policing violent criminals.
A look through the archived list of past federal grant recipients (FY 2022 and FY 2023) shows that many of the previous CVIPI grantees have also been funded by Everytown Support Fund’s Community Safety Fund. A very cursory examination of the archived list also reveals a few grant recipients with clear anti-Second Amendment, pro-gun control elements.
A group that appears twice on the archived CVIPI grant recipient list is the Connie Rice Institute for Urban Peace (a.k.a. Urban Peace Institute in Los Angeles). Gun control activist Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, sits on its board of directors, and the group’s “dedicated partners” include, besides Moms Demand Action, leading gun control entities Giffords Center for Violence Intervention and Everytown, as well as UC Davis Centers for Violence Prevention (Director: Gavin Wintemute). (Wintemute and his Centers for Violence Prevention have of late published a survey that purports to show that “[a]pproval of the NRA is associated with increased support for and willingness to engage in political violence, including lethal violence,” a finding it clams “can help focus political violence prevention efforts in the United States.”).
Another CVIPI grant recipient, Youth Alive!, Oakland, California’s “community-based violence prevention” agency, has, among other things, actively sponsored and supported gun control laws in the state. It lists itself as a co-sponsor of 2023 Assembly Bill 28 (“Funding violence prevention through a tax on guns and ammunition. Status: Signed into law by Governor Newsom on 09/26/23”), a “supporter” of 2022 Assembly Bill 228 (to “require the CA Department of Justice to conduct inspections of firearm dealers at least every three years, and audit the dealer’s record to make sure they are complying with the law. Status: Signed into law by Governor Newsom”) and a “supporter” of 2020 Assembly Bill 2847 (“Improves California’s law on firearm microstamping – allowing better tracing of firearms used in violent crimes. Status: Signed by the Governor”).
In August, the executive director of Youth Alive! participated in a panel discussion on the Future of Gun Violence Prevention, moderated by California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Other speakers were David Hogg and representatives from Brady: United Against Gun Violence and Everytown, on topics like, “How can California’s model of gun safety be replicated across the country?” and “What does accountability look like for a firearm industry driven by profit over people?”
While it remains to be seen how the CVIPI grant money will be allocated in the future, the changes suggest that not only will the focus be on actual, effective law enforcement and fighting violent crime, but that gun control advocates will have to rely, quite appropriately, on private pockets and philanthropy instead of the public purse to foot their bills.
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