Repeat violence involving domestic partners is an issue that state lawmakers tried to address previous year, passing a law banning anyone convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence in Nevada or any other state from possessing a gun.
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“They’re not in place in every community, so I think that we could expand that”, Yedlosky said.
In 2014, New Hampshire enacted a law that expressly created a domestic violence charge to cover cases of abuse involving intimate partners.
Locally and nationally, the figures for domestic violence deaths are undercounted because not all departments voluntarily report the information, and it does not include children and other bystanders who were killed, according to the AP.
A similar measure was not proposed this year amid dozens of other pieces of anti-crime legislation – such as a three-strikes law for enhancing sentences for repeat offenders, and a constitutional amendment to reform the state’s bail bond system and allow judges to deny bail to unsafe defendants awaiting trial. They said that more than 100 Iowa residents had been killed by firearms in domestic disputes in the prior 15 years, almost half of all such killings. She obtained a permanent protection-from-abuse order, court records show.
“We can’t tell how well the law is working if we can’t tell how judges are using their discretion”, Barber said. Critics say the federal law is too weak because it does not apply to dating relationships, does not ban guns during temporary protective orders and does not establish procedures for abusers to surrender firearms.
Newman’s bill would also ban gun possession for those convicted of sexual offenses and those with protective or restraining orders against them.
The measures have been backed by a broad coalition of advocates for domestic violence victims, law enforcement groups and gun control supporters who see easy access to firearms as a major contributor to domestic violence killings. Their conviction is entered into a state database, which makes them unable to pass a federal background check to buy guns. “In a state like Utah where we’re watching our domestic violence homicide rate escalate each year, arming more women isn’t going to do anything to prevent violence”.
Advocates had hoped the final law would mirror the less-nuanced federal gun ban on domestic abusers possessing guns, though no push is underway at present to amend and strengthen firearms provisions in the new law, Barber said.
“South Carolina is no longer thinking about the convenience of the abuser”, Haley said when she signed the bill in June.
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“We know that victims feel safer when their batterer has had their firearms removed”. They say the laws save lives and protect vulnerable women and children. And state law doesn’t require such weapons to be confiscated.
