DO GUNS BELONG IN THE HANDS OF DOMESTIC ABUSERS?
DO GUNS BELONG IN THE HANDS OF DOMESTIC ABUSERS?
Kelly Roskam of the Center for Gun Violence Solutions discusses a major firearms case before the Supreme Court
Kelly Roskam of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions discusses a Supreme Court case that will decide if a federal law prohibiting possession of firearms by people subject to domestic violence protection orders is constitutional
Finally disarming cops, eh?
No. They don’t. If you’re not a responsible person you cannot be a responsible gun owner.
This is a rather conservative supreme Court though. I honestly think they might find that gun rights trump an abuse survivor's right to safety.
It's not just gun rights. It's really a 5th ammendment issue that due process is required to deprive a person on life, liberty, or property.
It's not even a gun rights thing. It goes deeper. The conservative movement has the ideal of the Pater Familias, the male head of the family who holds the power of life and death over the members. In every way that matters, the Pater Familias owns their wife and children.
That's the traditional family that they want to bring back.
The thing is, even in ancient Rome (where the term was created) the community would often step in and take the family away if the abuse got too bad.
All throughout human history, if a husband beat his family too much, the other men in the community might "have a word" with him. Sometimes that was a quiet conversation, and sometimes it was a beating with the wife and kids staying suddenly with her sister.
It was only after we started living in cities that people started "minding their own business".
And yes, there have always been abusers who have been clever about hiding their abuse. But the conservative ideal of a man who could do whatever he wanted to his own family, never actually existed.
Domestic abusers shouldn't have guns...this is true.
The problem is that responsible people get protection orders issued against them all the time (and what's being discussed are protection orders, not convicted abusers)...because many states require no proof other than the word of the accuser...which inevitably leads to people weaponizing the process out of petty revenge or anger solely to make life hell for their ex. People convicted of domestic abuse would still lose their guns. What the article is discussing is whether people who've been accused without evidence should continue to have their rights stripped or not.
Where do they issue protective orders without more than the word of the accused?
Temporary POs, yes. But actual POs are pretty hard to get. Mine was denied even though my abuser plead guilty to domestic violence because the courts believed he should have the parental right to abuse his children without supervision, too.
I know that one: no, no they don't.
'Indeed, a woman is five times more likely to be murdered when her abuser has access to a gun.'
Read this link if you want to know more https://efsgv.org/learn/type-of-gun-violence/domestic-violence-and-firearms/
It's interesting that you support a Johns Hopkins piece with... a John Hopkins piece. That's a bit like doubling down on Everytown.
That particular claim is built upon some incredibly sketch analysis. This is the most common backing source.
The methodology:
An 11-city case–control design was used; femicide victims were cases (n = 220), and randomly identified abused women residing in the same metropolitan area were control women (n = 343). Co-investigators at each site collaborated with domestic violence advocacy, law enforcement, and medical examiner offices in implementing the study. Sampling quotas for cases and control women in each city were proportionately calculated so that the cities with the highest annual femicide rates included the largest number of cases and control women.
There's already a flaw here - bias in selection. By prioritizing 11 of the ~20k cities, towns, and villages in the US which has the highest counts of domestic violence murder of the female, they're skewing away from instances where there's... less murder. Of course your homicide rates are going to report higher, no matter what the risk factor.
It gets better, though - they skew numbers further by eliminating those with a history of abuse and those just too old to care about:
Two exclusion criteria, age (18–50 years) and no previous abuse by the femicide perpetrator, resulted in the elimination of 87 additional cases (28.3% of 307 cases), with 59 (19.2% of 307 cases) eliminated solely as a result of the latter criterion.
It's interesting they don't actually note what those cities are - it would be good to know if there are other notable stats e.g. crime rate, poverty, safety nets, so on. Heck, they recognize such:
Another limitation was that we excluded women who did not reside in large urban areas (other than Wichita, Kan) and control group women who did not have telephones. We also failed to keep records of exactly which proxy interviews (estimated to be less than 10% of the total) were conducted in person rather than by telephone, and thus we cannot evaluate the effects of this source of bias. Finally, we have no way to compare the control women who participated with those who did not, and women living in the most dangerous situations may have been less likely to participate as control women. If so, true exposure to the risk factors of interest among women involved in abusive intimate relationships may be greater than our control data suggest, thus inflating our estimates of increased risks associated with these exposures.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest Wichita isn't a model of prosperity and social safety nets.
That brings us to another flaw - this study isn't interested in identifying the spread and impact of all risk factors but instead is only interested in confirming presence of an already-suspected risk factor - another problem they recognize:
The interview included previously tested instruments, such as the Danger Assessment,16,17 and gathered information on demographic and relationship characteristics, including type, frequency, and severity of violence, psychological abuse, and harassment; alcohol and drug use; and weapon availability. ... Perhaps the most important limitation of the study is its necessary reliance on proxy respondents for data regarding hypothesized risk factors for intimate partner femicide cases.
This flaw entirely precludes consideration for the whether or not the presence of the firearm was material in the person's decision to murder e.g. impulsivity, whether or not they'd have just used another implement, etc.
That brings us to the most egregious flaw - simple, classic misleading through emotional appeal. Setting aside the selection bias and risk of over-representation, what is the actual rate and actual factor? You'll note none of the studies seem to actually address this. Going with Violence Policy Center's analysis of 2019 data, they at least provide numbers:
In 2019, there were 1,795 females murdered by males in single victim/single offender incidents that were submitted to the FBI for its Supplementary Homicide Report.
So, in 2019, a given woman was subject to odds of five ten thousandths of a percent (1,795/~330 million) likely to be murdered in domestic violence. If we extrapolate up to an expected life span of, say, 80 years, a given woman has been exposed to an ~0.04% total likelihood of being murdered in domestic violence. Oh, but that would hypothetically only be ~0.009% without those firearms; clearly they're the problem.
This source also provide a breakdown of implements:
Nationwide, for homicides in which the weapon could be determined (1,566), more female homicides were committed with firearms (58 percent) than with all other weapons combined. Knives and other cutting instruments accounted for 19 percent of all female murders, bodily force 10 percent, and murder by blunt object five percent. Of the homicides committed with firearms, 65 percent were committed with handguns.
Despite the arguments made regarding how firearms are the devil for making murder so easy, fists and knives gave an incredible showing of ~1/3 the murders. Notably, John Hopkins provides no hyperbole about knives. Weird, that. Notably absent is any implication of the presence of any of those items increasing risk.
This data also highlights clear skew toward some states regarding domestic violence homicide rates. Want to place a bet on where significant portions of the John Hopkins data came from?
For that year, Alaska ranked first as the state with the highest homicide rate among female victims killed by male offenders in single victim/single offender incidents. Its rate of 5.14 per 100,000 was more than four times the national rate. Alaska was followed by New Mexico (2.64 per 100,000) and Nevada (2.28 per 100,000). The remaining states with the 10 highest rates, all of which had female homicide victimization rates higher than the national rate, can be found in the chart below.
Ultimately, we're left with not a lot of support for Johns Hopkins' stance - which makes sense, as they can't really seem to support it either.
I'm all for addressing domestic violence, but let's not lie to ourselves and pretend it's all sunshine and rainbows without firearms, and let's not thoughtlessly share the conclusions of biased sources as if they're meaningful - we've had enough erosion of sense over the last decade.
This is a lot of splitting of hairs on your part. Are you a social scientist and a statistician? If not, I will defer to the experts on this. The amount of unreported domestic abuse dwarfs the amount that is reported. Also, solely focusing on deaths is a misnomer. Being threatened by an abuser with a gun is rather common and also detrimental to the mental health of the victim.
I know all caps isn't the proper Netiquette but that's what the article published.
Thanks for saying so. All caps does come off as shouting and the headline itself comes off as a loaded, no pun intended, queston.
NO PROBLEM!
Unfortunately, in many states, no actual proof or evidence is required to get a domestic protection order issued against someone. Some individuals do actually weaponize the justice system just to take out their anger on another person, damage their reputation, and make their life hell for no other reason than to make their life hell.
This article title is bait and switch. The law still would prohibit convicted domestic abusers from possessing firearms. The subject of this current challenge is about whether it should continue to impact people who've merely been accused by someone or not.
This has happened to both my brother and a very good long-time friend. Both individuals were eventually completely vindicated but the current system allowed an accuser, without any evidence, the ability to have protection orders placed, their firearms confiscated, their concealed pistol licenses revoked, their reputations damaged, and it cost them thousands in attorneys fees to deal with. And at the end of it all, and after being completely vindicated, zero repercussions for the accuser of the false accusations.
I don't know what the right answer is here, but the discussion has merit before blindly accepting the title of this post at face value because there's a lot more to it than what the title implies.
In order for such orders to be useful they need to be easy to get wothout evidence. However because they must be easy to get falsely the effect must be limited to the minimum needed and they cannot destory someones life.
It would be more accurate to say the case in question is about whether or not due process matters for such a restriction; that civil findings are insufficient to restricting one's constitutional rights.
Leave it to John Hopkins to misrepresent a "firearms" issue entirely.
This comment section is pathetic.
No. Next question.
NO
Of course they do! Otherwise, all Republicans would have to give up their guns.
Quick note that is neither in favor nor opposed:
In many places in the US, you need to provide an address in order to get a protective order so that the subject of the order knows where they can't go. For people that have left violent partners, that's a generally bad idea, since police generally don't do anything to enforce protective orders, even after repeated violations.
Personally, I find the "gun debate" very interesting. On one hand, you have common sense. On the other hand, the constitution.
Being that in 2006, four Democratically appointed justices acknowledged the second amendment is in regard to state militias and five Republican appointed justices essentially affirmed state militias aren't even mentioned in the second amendment (barely an exaggeration), the right to protect yourself with a firearm is going trump someone else's right to not be afraid of being shot by a known aggressor.
As it is, on paper, I side with someone's right to protect themselves, even a domestic abuser. But that doesn't mean I don't think everything but six shooters and hunting rifles should be banned and melted down.
Which brings us to the topics of mental health, human decency, the oppression of the poor, police brutality, underfunded school systems, the breakdown of supportive family structures, lack of constructive outlets, religious zealots, inflation, gender roles, fear of irrelevance, exportation and robotization of jobs, etc, etc, etc. As has been in the headlines, do people really have free choice when "the system" steers them down a path?
It's a quandary.
all guns should be owned by bricks /s
The easy solution would be to let only let people who have proven beyond doubt that they are good enough to own and carry a gun are allowed to do that. If the faith into their ability gets dented, put those weapons in custody until the case is cleared. That's how about any other country does handle the gun issue, and they all have less problems than the US for some unexplainable reason...
Alternatively- if someone is to dangerous to have a gun then they are too dangerous to participate in society any more.
There are quite a lot of people who I would let participate in society, but never with a gun.
It turns out, if the Founding Fathers didn't know about computers, then the government has no right to pass laws about computers. Isn't government great?
YES