Currently, Brady has staffed local Combating Crime Guns programs in Oakland, CA, Los Angeles, CA, and Milwaukee, WI, and is developing a statewide program in New Jersey. These programs aim to work with local community members to reduce gun violence by stemming the flow of crime guns, frequently from dealers outside their city or even their own state.

These programs rely on a three-pronged strategy: Educate; Identify; Reform.

Educate: The majority of the cities most impacted by gun violence do not have many (if any at all) federally licensed gun dealers within their city limits. Instead, the dealers sit outside the communities that are most affected, frequently in less diverse and more affluent suburbs, and profit off of irresponsible or illegal sales that drive dozens of guns into cities.

Identify: It's critical to identify the irresponsible dealers that are enabling the proliferation of crime guns. In order to do this, Brady is building partnerships with law enforcement, elected officials, and community members to create and publicize crime gun trace data at both the state and local levels. Tracing crime guns back to their source and making this data publicly available is essential to identifying problem dealers and driving meaningful change. Brady acts as a conduit for local agencies, cities, counties, and states to share best practices and develop strategies for how to address the supply of crime guns.

Reform: Brady supports a comprehensive approach to reforming gun dealers, which includes raising consumer awareness to hold negligent or irresponsible gun dealers accountable. Reform also includes gun dealers adopting the Brady Code of Conduct, local legislators passing enforceable legislation around dealer licensing and trace report requirements, and law enforcement and local agencies working to hold irresponsible dealers and straw purchasers accountable. These reform tactics will ultimately result in fewer gun injuries and deaths from violent crime.

The Los Angeles Combating Crime Guns Initiative works closely with the Los Angeles Mayor's Office's Youth Council to End Gun Violence. Together, we have organized the city's Louder Than Guns campaign. As a result of this campaign's success, Brady's LA team will be spearheading the Mayor's expansion of this program throughout California and select cities in the U.S. A member of Brady’s Combating Crime Guns LA team also serves on the California Violence Intervention and Prevention (CalVIP) Executive Steering Committee to find and fund community-based gun violence prevention groups with the greatest impact. As part of the LA Combating Crime Guns Initiative, Brady also closely monitors the increasing use of ghost guns. The LA team works with partners, as well as local and state legislators, on new legislation to put an end to untraceable ghost guns in California, while working collaboratively with other state leaders to identify solutions to the national problems of ghost guns.

The Oakland Combating Crime Guns Initiative works to build coalitions with community-based gun violence prevention organizations that work hand in hand with communities and individuals most impacted by violence. Brady’s Oakland Combating Crime Guns team serve as members of the Violence Prevention Coalition and the California Violence Intervention and Prevention (CalVIP) grant program.

The Oakland initiative also works with local law enforcement and key stakeholders to ensure that important information is continually released to the public. In April 2019, the Oakland Police Department publicly released a crime gun trace report including data on the number and type of firearms recovered from crimes, the origin of each firearm by state, and the “time to crime” or amount of time passed between when the gun left the original supplier and the crime that took place. This report exists thanks, in no small part, to the advocacy of Brady and the Oakland Gun Tracing Group, and it is critical to identifying irresponsible gun dealers.

The Milwaukee Combating Crime Guns Initiative operates under the guidance of the citywide Blueprint for Peace plan. Brady’s Milwaukee team works with local law enforcement, the Office of Violence Prevention, Safe and Sound, and other community groups to shift the burden of crime prevention from city residents to the suburban gun dealers who are the primary source of the city’s illegal guns.