June is National Gun Violence Awareness Month.  It is a time to raise awareness about violence and advocate for solutions to prevent it, suggests Winn’s DART advocate Annie Goods.

Guns and domestic violence are a lethal combination.  State and federal laws must include protections to ensure that individuals with histories of domestic violence cannot purchase or possess firearms, she says.  Nearly half of all women murdered in the United States are killed by a current or former intimate partner, and more than half of these intimate partner homicides are by firearm.

DART contends violence against partners and family members is a public health crisis, and given the accessibility and availability of guns in America, this violence is often perpetrated with a firearm.  Domestic violence homicide data does not accurately capture the magnitude of domestic violence fatalities and use of firearms in domestic violence.  These gaps make it challenging to understand the full scope of domestic violence nationally and to advocate for and implement data driven domestic violence prevention strategies on the national, state, and local level.  Even when there are no shots fired, abusers often use the mere presence of a firearm to intimidate, control, coerce, threaten, and injure intimate partners.

Rosalind Penegar, the Claiborne Parish advocate, says “We have the potential to protect domestic violence victims and survivors through policies, programs, and interventions.  Additionally, we need to improve collection and reporting of domestic violence related data.

Research shows that domestic violence offenders have criminal histories but may not have been convicted of crimes of domestic violence.”