Lawmakers and governors of both parties have supported bills stripping gun rights from those who have been convicted of domestic violence-related crimes or are subject to protective orders. It covers both misdemeanor and felony assaults.
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It follows a nationwide trend.
Associated Press research shows more than a dozen states have passed laws in the last two years meant to make it harder for domestic abusers to possess firearms. Federal law already bars those individuals from possessing a gun, but VanAudenhove said outlawing it at the state level will have a big impact because it will allow local law enforcement agencies to enforce the ban.
More than 200 people were killed with guns by spouses, ex-spouses or dating partners in Missouri between 2006 and 2014, according to an Associated Press analysis of Federal Bureau of Investigation data.
Groups representing domestic violence victims, gun safety advocates and law enforcement officials often join together to push for these measures.
Amanda Grady Sexton, the director of public policy at the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, said one key challenge was ensuring that lawmakers did not view it as an anti-gun measure. His changes include strengthening the federal background check system, which has denied gun sales 120,000 times since 1998 because of domestic violence convictions.
Rep. Robert Wittenberg, D-Oak Park, introduced two bills past year that would have created a restraining order specifically for guns, but the legislation got stuck in the House Judiciary Committee the same day it was introduced, according to state documents. “And this is a way to stop, hopefully, bad things from happening”, Wittenberg said.
The bill would require courts to order a person convicted of a crime of violence that is a “domestically related crime” to transfer his or her guns to a federally licensed firearms dealer. But he said no one will argue that mentally ill or violent criminals should be able to keep their guns.
“They should be encouraged and told that they need to take measures in order to protect themselves if they think there is a credible threat”, Vilos said.
The changes came in the wake of The Post and Courier’s Pulitzer Prize-winning series Till Death Do Us Part that analyzed the legislative and societal factors that contributed to the deaths of more than 300 women.
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Oxborrow called that school of thought “absurd”. Severe crimes carry a lifetime gun ban, and the second-most severe offense would carry a 10-year ban. “If we put more guns in homes where domestic violence is occurring, we’ll see more deaths”.
