(Above, Inset: l-r): Speakers – Pauletta Perez, Board Member, Voices Against Violence; Laura Cutilletta, Managing Director, Giffords Law Center; Tiffany Garner, Community Violence Initiatives State Manager, Giffords Law Center; and Shikha Hamilton, National Director of Advocacy and Mobilization at Brady: United to End Gun Violence. (Siliconeer/EMS)

In the U.S., 4.5 million women have been threatened with a gun by their domestic partner. 1 million have been shot during a domestic dispute, and at least 600 women are shot to death each year during a domestic dispute, according to data from the Giffords Law Center. Children in the home are often victims in domestic disputes involving a gun, and, increasingly, perpetrators of such crimes. Gun sales and domestic violence both increased by more than 20 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Brady: United to End Gun Violence.

 

Ethnic Media Service held a briefing, Sept. 17, where speakers – Pauletta Perez, Board Member, Voices Against Violence; Laura Cutilletta, Managing Director, Giffords Law Center; Tiffany Garner, Community Violence Initiatives State Manager, Giffords Law Center; and Shikha Hamilton, National Director of Advocacy and Mobilization at Brady: United to End Gun Violence – discussed the rising prevalence of guns in domestic disputes, whether there are adequate law enforcement resources available to women facing gun violence, why federal gun control measures have largely failed to date, state measures to restruct access to guns, and what may be in the Congressional pipeline.

A domestic violence victim, who was shot four times in the head by her husband, shared her story of survival.

Data suggests there is a close connection and a half million women have been threatened with a gun by their domestic partner. A million women have been shot and 600 have been killed. Children are often victims and increasingly perpetrators of these crimes.

Pauletta Perez, who is a survivor, shared her very personal story, along with the advocacy work that she’s now doing. “(On) January 2nd of 2010, I experienced domestic violence to the ultimate extent, I was shot by my husband, a total of five times, four times in the head.”

He continued shooting, I continued to try to dodge bullets, somehow after being shot five times I was able to barrel past him to get myself out of the room,” said Perez.

“You may wonder where did he get this gun? Well, my father, who two years prior had a stroke, was an avid gun enthusiast. My father asked him to take his guns which were all legal and registered and drop them to the police department. Turns out that my husband never turned in those guns. He shot me with my father’s gun,” said Perez.

According to Perez, the increase of domestic violence and the increase of gun sales and purchases contribute to the increase of deaths caused by gun violence, especially in a domestic violence situation.

Tiffany Garner and Laura Cutilletta of the Giffords Law Center talked about the prevalence of gun-related domestic violence – how the perpetrators are prosecuted.

“Victims come from all different variations and walks of life, there is no one cookie cutter form of a victim,” said Garner.

“The presence of guns, when children are involved and how that can also exasperate the situations, but the combination of intimate partner violence and access to firearms is often a very deadly mixture. Both are preventable public health concerns. The nexus of guns and domestic violence puts women at a tremendous.

“In the United States, women are 21 more times likely to be killed with a gun than in other high-income countries.

“More than 600 women are shot by intimate partners, that’s roughly one every 14 hours.

“4.5 million women report that a partner has threatened them with a gun,” said Garner.

The assaults involving guns are 12 times more likely to result in deaths than other weapons or bodily force. While men and women are killed by intimate partners – 78 percent of intimate partner homicide victims are women, 98 of those women are killed by male partners, pointed Garner.

“On the national scale, most domestic violence cases are handled in civil context but there are a variety of reasons why domestic violence cases do not go to court – the victim doesn’t seek protective orders, or they may decide to withdraw, or maybe they decide to decline any legal remedy in civil domestic violence actions – often offenders or abusers will do different manipulative tactics to try to sway victims from proceeding or for moving forward with court cases,” said Garner.

“When it comes to prosecuting cases, the prosecutor will need evidence to satisfy. That could be photos, video, testimony that often is hard to prove in some cases where they may not be a lot of physical evidence.

“The completed sentence can range from probation to jail time and fines is just going to vary state by state. These cases are often dismissed. It’s difficult to account for the exact numbers of how many of these cases are dismissed with plea deals.

“According to the bureau of justice assistance, it is estimated that the overwhelming majority of cases they’re estimating between 90 to 95 percent of cases result in plea bargains. Some victims don’t choose to even pursue a restraining order or some sort of legal remedies.

When it comes to communities of color, many do not want their spouse, no matter how hard and difficult they’ve treated them, they don’t want a man of color to go down the road of plea bargains and other penalties that may come because of what’s going to happen,” pointed Garner.

“The legal framework that’s in place to restrict access to firearms by those who have committed domestic violence – there are two main ways – the first is prohibiting people from purchasing or possessing a gun if they’ve been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, this is federal law and there are also numerous states that have enacted this law as well. Few issues that decrease its effectiveness – first the law is only as good as the background check system that’s in place, unfortunately at the federal level, background checks are only required when purchasing from a licensed dealer. A purchase from a gun show or from a private party who’s advertising a gun on the internet doesn’t require a background check. If no background check is required, no one will find out that there’s a domestic violence prohibition.

However, many states including California have closed this loophole and do require background checks for all sales.

“The other loophole is the boyfriend loophole. Federal law only applies to current or former spouses, parents or guardians, a victim with a child in common, or a current or former cohabitant. It doesn’t apply to dating partners or former dating partners. This loophole and dating partners is a very common relationship type where a lot of abuse can happen but many states have fixed this problem as well by enacting their own laws. The other way to restrict access to people who have committed abuse is through restraining orders.

“An emergency ex parte restraining order is when a victim asks a judge for protection through a court order and the respondent or the person who has committed abuse has not been given notice that this has happened so the respondent does not even know that the victim came to a court and asked for protection. There has not been a hearing, there’s been no chance to respond to the allegations, and the judge is asked to deem whether or not the allegations are severe enough that the victim needs protection immediately even without the respondent being given a chance to respond. After a period of time the respondent will be given notice and a hearing is set up and then the respondent can come and tell the other side of the story,” said Cutilletta.

Children are both victims of domestic violence and they can also be perpetrators. As many as 10 million children and adolescents witness violence between their parents or caregivers each year. These children, who are exposed to domestic violence, can experience emotional mental and social damage that can affect their developmental growth, and male children, in particular, who witness domestic violence, appear to be at a higher risk of using violence when they are older.

Having a gun in the house when a family is in crisis puts adults and children at risk of violence including other forms of violence such as homicide, unintentional shootings, and suicide.

Nearly 1 in 11 female and approximately 1 in 14 male high school students report having experienced physical dating violence in the last year and 26 of women who were victims of sexual violence physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner first experienced these or other forms of violence by that partner before the age of 18, pointed Cutilletta.

“There is an indisputable link between firearms and fatal outcomes in a domestic violence situation. The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of homicide by 500 percent. This is a pressing issue in our country and for the gun violence prevention movement,” said Shikha Hamilton.

“As an Indian American, I was often struck by the difference between the environment and culture I had grown up in versus the pervasive gun culture here in America.

“Despite our unfamiliarity or even disinterest in firearms I knew my family and I were still at risk of gun violence no matter where you come from, your ethnicity, or culture, that is a reality all of us must understand living in America,” said Hamilton.

“In California, we have led on preventing gun violence – during the 1980s and early 1990s California’s firearm mortality rate was consistently higher than in the rest of the U.S. The state responded by enacting the strongest firearm laws in the country and it worked.

“As California’s strong firearm laws took effect the state’s firearm mortality rate began a steep decline from 1993 to 2019, California’s firearm mortality rate decreased 59 percent, almost four times the decrease in the rest of the nation.

“By 2019 the firearm mortality rate in California was substantially lower than the rate in the rest of the country. Strong gun laws work,” said Hamilton.