Oregon Passes First Gun Law Since Florida AShooting...Big Deal for Women

[malaise]

http://www.newsweek.com/oregons-new-gun-law-big-step-single-women-81879
<snip>
Despite two attempts from Republican lawmakers to send the bill back to committee, Oregon Democrats on Thursday passed the first gun control measure since the deadly shooting at a Florida High School—and advocates say the measure is a huge step forward for single women.

The legislation, which passed 16-13, is designed to close the so-called “boyfriend loophole,” a gap in the law that women’s advocacy groups have been trying to close for more than two decades. The legal blind spot, created by lax wording, allows unmarried men who live alone to slip through a federal law preventing convicted domestic abusers from purchasing guns.

“What the boyfriend loophole means is that someone who is convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence who only dated their victim, never lived with or had a child together, is legally able to continue to purchase and possess guns,” April Zeoli, a professor of criminal justice at Michigan State University, told Newsweek.

Practically speaking, if you have two people who committed the same act of violence against their intimate partners and were both convicted, but one was married to their victim and the other had been dating their victim, only the one who was married would be prohibited from having access to guns,” Zeoli said.

Sadly, what’s different this time, is it took the voices and outrage of youth devastated by gun violence to hold decision makers’ feet to the fire,” she said.

In passing the bill, Oregon joins a slew of other states—Washington, Louisiana, North Dakota, Utah, New Jersey, Tennessee and Maryland—that have closed or narrowed the loophole. Advocates and researchers are now hoping that other states will follow suit.

[BigmanPigman]

1. I read a short article about domestic violence and guns.

I always think of a possible abused woman when I hear of a male involved in an initially unexplained motive after a shooting.

11 facts about gun violence in the United States
EDITED BY DYLAN MATTHEWS
JUN 13, 2016, 12:48PM EDT
1. There's roughly one gun for every person in America
2. Gun crime is more prevalent in the US than in other rich countries
3. Gun homicides (like all homicides) are declining
4. Places with more guns have more homicides
5. There are more gun suicides than gun homicides in America
6. Suicide is more common in places with more guns
7. Living in a house with a gun increases your odds of death
8. Guns contribute to domestic violence
9. Mass shootings represent a tiny share of all shooting deaths
10. A tiny fraction of gun violence is committed by the mentally ill
11. Gun control is popular, but less so than in the 1990s

Guns contribute to domestic violence
While everyone is at a greater risk of dying by homicide if they have access to a gun, the connection is stronger for women. In a survey of battered women, 71.4 percent of respondents reported that guns had been used against them, usually to threaten to kill them. A study comparing abused women who survived with those killed by their abuser found that 51 percent of women who were killed had a gun in the house. By contrast, only 16 percent of women who survived lived in homes with guns.

Jacquelyn Campbell, a Johns Hopkins professor responsible for much of what we know about guns and domestic violence (and domestic violence in general), developed a set of screening questions to ask abused women to determine who's at the most risk of being killed by their abuser. Among the questions in the screen, which has been adopted by Maryland police and appears to be working, are a couple about the abuser's access to guns, emphasizing that gun access is a risk factor for homicide in abusive relationships.

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2014/02/having-gun-house-doesnt-make-woman-safer/8474/

[malaise]

3. Thanks for this

[smirkymonkey]

2. Bravo Oregon!

This should be the law in every state.