Domestic Violence Groups Praise the Ruling as a Critical Safety Measure
In a rare 8-1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court decided U.S. v. Rahimi today in favor of restricting access to firearms for domestic violence abusers. The higher court held that: “An individual found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.”
Civil protection orders are a critical piece of safety for many domestic violence survivors around the country. The federal firearms restrictions – and state laws modeled after them – that apply to respondents of protection orders save lives. Today, those laws and the protection they provide to survivors of domestic violence were upheld as constitutional.
The National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV), the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence (DCCADV), and Crowell & Moring worked together to file an amicus brief in the Supreme Court focused on the stories of domestic violence victims and survivors. The brief urged the court to recognize the specific dangers domestic violence abusers with access to guns pose to their victims and to our communities. The groups asked the court to prioritize the safety of victims.
The first-hand accounts from survivors and their loved ones demonstrate how abusive partners use guns to control, intimidate, terrorize, and often kill their victims, and how protective orders are important for survivor safety. This unique, survivor-centered amicus brief was supported by 60 gender-based violence organizations from nearly every state and U.S. territory.
“It was reassuring to see the Court nearly unified in its 8-1 decision upholding the protections Congress put in place to take guns out of the hands of those who present a direct threat to the safety of domestic violence survivors,” said Jason Stiehl, who oversaw the Crowell legal team that helped draft the amicus brief.
In the brief, survivors shared distressing accounts of how abusive partners used guns to further their abuse, including implicit and explicit threats. Tragically, not every victim survived to tell their story. Just two harrowing stories of the use of guns in domestic violence include those of Connie* and Amy*:
During one of many domestic violence calls to Connie’s* house, her mother told the officers that her son-in-law had a gun and had threatened to kill her daughter. The police said there was nothing they could do. One night, when Connie went to pick up her 10-year-old daughter from her husband, he shot Connie seven times right in front of her daughter.
Amy* was seeking a permanent Civil Protection Order against an abuser. While she had a temporary protective order and was awaiting a court date for the civil protective order, the abuser shot and killed Amy in her home with her five young children nearby.
Firearms and domestic violence are a deadly mix. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, in her US v. Rahimi concurrence highlighted alarming data: “A woman who lives in a house with a domestic abuser is five times more likely to be murdered if the abuser has access to a gun” and “over 70 people shot and killed by an intimate partner each month in the United States.” The justices go on to highlight that the danger abusers pose extends far beyond their target victim: “Because domestic violence is rarely confined to the intimate partner that receives the protective order, the Government’s interest extends even further. In roughly a quarter of cases where an abuser killed an intimate partner, the abuser also killed someone else, such as a child, family member, or roommate.”
Although civil protection orders prohibiting abusers from possessing a firearm are not perfect, they are still important protections for victims of domestic violence. “We know that more must be done to enforce these life-saving firearms prohibitions. We also understand that efforts to undermine survivor safety will continue. We, the domestic violence coalitions and survivor-serving organizations, will continue to be vigilant and stand firmly with survivors. We will not back down,” said the DCCADV and NNEDV in a joint statement. “Firearm prohibitions for abusers make all of us safer. In the US v. Rahimi decision, the Supreme Court kept those protections in place. We need to continue to listen to and center the needs of survivors of domestic violence, and the family members of victims who didn’t survive, who have shared experiences of being terrorized or killed when firearms and domestic violence intersect.”
“We’re gratified to see that the Supreme Court made the right decision both under the controlling legal precedent and to protect survivors of domestic violence against gun violence by taking firearms out of the hands of people who have proven that they are willing to use violence to intimidate and control their intimate partners,” said Lyndsay A. Gorton, who served on the Crowell legal team. Outside of Stiehl and Gorton, the team included Eli Berns-Zieve, Kevin D. Cacabelos and Idris Motiwala.
*Names are changed to protect the privacy of the victims and their family members.
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