Women Under the Gun - Guns are a Women's Issue

[Haveadream]

What are the Dem candidates doing about this?

How Gun Violence Affects Women and 4 Policy Solutions to Better Protect Them

Weak gun laws at the federal and state levels leave far too many women facing a fatal end to domestic abuse. Violence against women looks very different than violence against men. Whether in the context of sexual assault on college campuses or in the military, violence by an intimate partner, or other types of violent victimization, women’s experiences of violence in this country are unique from those of men. One key difference in the violence committed against women in the United States is who commits it: Women are much more likely to be victimized by people they know, while men are more likely to be victims of violent crime at the hands of strangers.

Between 2003 and 2012, 65 percent of female violent crime victims were targeted by someone they knew; only 34 percent of male violent crime victims knew their attackers. Intimate partners make up the majority of known assailants: During the same time period, 34 percent of all women murdered were killed by a male intimate partner, compared to the only 2.5 percent of male murder victims killed by a female intimate partner.

A staggering portion of violence against women is fatal, and a key driver of these homicides is access to guns. From 2001 through 2012, 6,410 women were murdered in the United States by an intimate partner using a gun—more than the total number of U.S. troops killed in action during the entirety of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined. Guns are used in fatal intimate partner violence more than any other weapon: Of all the women killed by intimate partners during this period, 55 percent were killed with guns. Women in the United States are 11 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than are women in other high income countries.

This report provides an overview of the data regarding the intersection of intimate partner violence and gun violence, describing four policies that states and the federal government should enact to reduce dangerous abusers’ access to guns and prevent murders of women:


Bar all convicted abusers, stalkers, and people subject to related restraining orders from possessing guns.

Provide all records of prohibited abusers to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS.

Require a background check for all gun sales.

Ensure that abusers surrender any firearms they own once they become prohibited.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/guns-crime/report/2014/06/18/91998/women-under-the-gun/