King County gun violence keeps on dropping in 2025

Gun violence continues to drop in King County with firearm homicides and injuries hitting a five-year low in the second quarter of 2025.

New data released Thursday, July 24 by King County Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion shows King County is experiencing a decrease in gun violence that began in 2024, continued in the first quarter of 2025, and now is confirmed to have continued into the second quarter of this year, according to a King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office press release.

The 2024 numbers showed that gun violence levels in the county were trending downward for the first time since 2018. Then, 2025 began with the safest first quarter (January through March) in terms of gun violence in the past five years. Now, the data shows the following three months (April through June) of 2025 – the second quarter – also has the lowest levels of gun violence for that quarter in the past five years.

Compared to 2024, the second quarter of 2025 saw a 22% drop (18 to 14) in firearm homicide victims, a 33% drop (82 to 55) in nonfatal shooting victims and a 25% drop (373 to 278) in total shots fired incidents (nearly 100 fewer shots fired incidents).

“King County is making progress – and we must continue our work to decrease gun violence,” Manion said. “Today’s (July 24) data shows that the decreases in gun violence in 2024 and the first quarter of this year were not a fluke.”

The total shots fired peaked at 250 in South King County through the second quarter of 2023, but dropped to 123 in 2025. The number of shooting victims peaked at 121 and homicides at 35 through the second quarter of 2023 throughout the county, with those numbers dropping to 55 shooting victims in second quarter 2025 and 14 homicides.

Manion recently shared information about new partnerships in Kent between the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, the Kent Police Department, the Latino Civic Alliance and Project Be Free, which launched in November 2024. This initiative seeks to combat gun violence through two main goals: 1) solving non-fatal shootings, and 2) identifying and reaching out to the people who the data show are most at risk of becoming gun violence victims or perpetrators.

How it works: The organizations regularly meet to share the latest information about specific incidents of gun violence – with a focus on understanding who are the victims and witnesses of gun violence, and who is most at risk for being impacted by gun violence in the future, according to the press release.

Project Be Free and the Latino Civic Alliance are doing direct outreach to people that experience and data suggest are most at risk of becoming a victim of gun violence. Law enforcement and prosecutors are working to identify and prosecute perpetrators responsible for gun violence, with a renewed emphasis on solving non-fatal shootings. By solving non-fatal shooting cases, law enforcement and prosecutors are interrupting individuals who may be at risk of continued or even more serious forms of violence.

This multi-pronged approach – prevention, intervention, and enforcement – appears to be corresponding with a positive impact, according to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.

The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office is filing cases involving firearm violence each week and is regularly sharing information and data about cases involving firearms with law enforcement and local government leaders throughout the county.

The data represented is reported to the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office directly from these participating police agencies:

Auburn, Bellevue, Des Moines, Federal Way, Kent, Kirkland, King County Sheriff’s Office, Renton, Seattle, Tukwila and Washington State Patrol. This data does not include suicides or officer-involved shootings. Individuals shot in confirmed self-defense cases and confirmed self-inflicted shootings are not counted toward the total fatal and non-fatal victim count.

Shooting victim demographics

Of the 69 shooting victims (55 injuries, 14 homicides) in the second quarter of 2025, approximately half were identified as Black or African American, 90% were identified as male, and a majority of victims were between the ages of 18-24. Compared to second quarter of 2024, there was a 31% decrease in the overall number of shooting victims but Black or African American males remained the majority of shooting victims in both years and in the second quarter of the last five years.

Courtesy Graphic, King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office

Courtesy Graphic, King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office