October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month

[AndyS]

Intimate partner shooting deaths are soaring — especially since the pandemic. In a new story about how existing laws leave lethal loopholes for domestic violence victims, Reveal News and The Guardian obtained previously unpublished FBI data showing that gun homicides by intimate partners are at their highest levels since the mid-90s. While there’s been a steady 58-percent total increase in the last decade, 2020 alone saw a 25-percent spike over 2019. Women accounted for over two-thirds of intimate partner gun homicide victims in 2020. Many of those killings were committed by people who weren’t allowed to possess guns under federal law: Reveal obtained data from 21 states that included at least 110 cases from 2017 through 2020, suggesting the nationwide total could be much higher. The FBI data, also analyzed by Northeastern University professor and criminologist James Alan Fox, shows that more than 122,000 Americans have died by the hands of their intimate partners since 1976; 2,800 of those happened in 2020, which the story labels “an especially lethal period for abuse victims.” Related from The Trace: Ann Givens wrote about how firearms restrictions aren’t automatically included in temporary orders of protection in many states.

https://revealnews.org/article/gun-laws-domestic-violence-victims/
https://www.thetrace.org/2021/01/domestic-violence-gun-protective-order-rosemarie-reilly-michigan/

If you aren't mad yet, WHY FFS?

It doesn't have to be this way. You know it and I know it.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. It is truly an awful situation.

Women just don't matter to society as a whole, as much as men do.

That is the huge platform upon which this problem rests.

[niyad]

2. and the WAR ON WOMEN continues apace. Thank you for posting this sad, ugly

information about how little women are valued in the patriarchy.

[AndyS]

3. It's worse than that.

One of the tools available to prevent domestic violence with guns is the Red Flag law. Under these laws a family member or the police can petition a judge to remove the guns from someone who may be a danger to themselves or others.

Most states with such laws don't advise the judicial or law enforcement branches of these tools or how to implement them. Of the requests by police about 60% are granted, by family members a pitifully small number. To make matters worse a restraining order does not automatically come with firearms removal even if it is asked for. When such requests are granted they seldom actually follow through EVEN IF A JUDGE ORDERED IT.

When it comes to guns it seems the REAL problem is 'she just wouldn't listen'.