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13 Crim. L. Prac. 27 (2022-2023)
Domestic Violence and Firearm Relinquishment: Closing the Fatal Chasm between Federal Law and State Enforcement

handle is hein.journals/crilp13 and id is 35 raw text is: 




          THE CRIMINAL LAW PRACTITIONER
                                                               VOLUML  XIII, ISSUL I

DOMESTIC   VIOLENCE   AND  FIREARM   RELINQUISHMENT                                    WOO


                DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND FIREARM

      RELINQUISHMENT: CLOSING THE FATAL CHASM

   BETWEEN FEDERAL LAW AND STATE ENFORCEMENT



                             BY   DANIELLE M. Woo





                                    INTRODUCTION


    Verbal and emotional abuse became a daily occurrence. When Katie would try to talk to her husband
    about what she needed from the marriage-like time together     arguments always followed... .
    At one point, he forbade her from using the word needs .... One morning when it all became
    too much, Katie decided to contact a divorce attorney. Her husband overheard the phone call and
    stormed into the kitchen holding a loaded revolver to his head, threatening to kill himself if she left.
    Then, he turned the gun on Katie.'

        In the United States, 1 in 3 female murder victims and 1 in 20 male murder  victims
are killed by intimate partners.2 Around   4.5  million women   in the United   States have
been  threatened  with a firearm, and  nearly one  million women   have  been  shot at by an
intimate partner.' It should not  come  as a surprise that the presence  of  a gun  within a
domestic  violence (DV)4  situation statistically raises the risk of homicide for women by
500%.   Coercion   and control  are primary  tools that abusers use to maintain  power  over
their victims; weapons, namely  guns, only serve to exacerbate this dynamic.'


   Julia Garlich, Lost in the Fight: As Gun Laws Expand in MO., Domestic Violence Victims Pay the Price, COLUMBIA
   MISSOURIAN (May 2, 2021), https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/local/lost-in-the-fight-as-gun-rights-expand-
   in-mo-domestic-violence-victims-pay-the/article_b25c76d4-a94b-11 eb-9a89-eb1cbb4798f4.html.
2  NAT. COAL. AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, GUNS & DOMESTIC VIOLENCE 1 (2013) (citing F. Stephen Bridges et al.,
   Domestic Violence Statutes and Rates ofIntimate Partner and Family Homicide: A Research Note, 19 CRIM. JUSTICE
   POL'Y REv. 117 (2008)), https://assets.speakcdn.com/assets/2497/gunsanddv0.pdf.
3  Lisa B. Geller et al., The Role of Domestic Violence in Fatal Mass Shootings in the United States, 2014-2019, INJURY
   EPIDEMIOLOGY, 1 (2021) https://doi.org/10.1186/s40621-021-00330-0.
4  The term domestic violence (DV) is commonly used interchangeably with intimate partner violence (IPV). This
   Article, however, will use DV as an umbrella term as it can also encompass child and elder abuse, or abuse by any
   member of a household while IPV more specifically refers to abuse within partnerships between two people who
   are or were involved in an intimate relationship. See CLAUDIA GARCIA-MORENO, ALESSANDRA GUEDES & WENDY KNERR,
   WORLD HEALTH ORG., Intimate Partner Violence, in UNDERSTANDING AND ADDRESSING VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN 2 n.1
   (2012).
s  Domestic Violence and Firearms: A Lethal Combination, COLO. COAL. AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE 1 (2013), https://
   www.violencefreecolorado.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/DV-and-Firearms-handout.pdf   [https://perma.cc/
   VM7K-ARXP].
6  Domestic Violence, NAT. COAL. AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE (2020), https://assets.speakcdn.com/assets/2497/do-
   mestic_violence-2020080709350855.pdf?1596811079991 (Domestic violence is the willful intimidation, physical
   assault, battery, sexual assault, and/or other abusive behavior as part of a systematic pattern of power and control
   perpetrated by one intimate partner against another. It includes physical violence, sexual violence, threats, economic,
   and emotional/psychological abuse. The frequency and severity of domestic violence varies dramatically.).


DOMESTIC   VIOLENCE  AND  FIREARM  RELINQUISHMENT 1 27

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