The National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Supports S. 1290, Legislation That Would Close Dangerous Loopholes in

Federal Firearms Protections for Victims. This is the Unfinished Work of VAWA.

The NRAs recent alert demonstrates that NRA leadership intends to mislead

Congress and the public about domestic violence, dating violence, and stalkingterrible crimes that disproportionately impact women.

The National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence, a coalition of thousands of organizations and individuals that support and serve millions of victims of sexual and domestic violence, supports S. 1290, which addresses the intersection of stalking, dating violence, and firearms violence. Current federal firearms law protects only victims of domestic violence from firearms violence. Victims of the equally dangerous crimes of stalking and dating violence lack those same protections.

Research shows that firearms possession by those who commit stalking and domestic and dating violence crimes is an indicator of lethality. Women in the U.S. are killed by intimate partners and stalkers at alarming rates, and firearms play a key role in turning domestic abuse into murder.

Domestic violence offenders commit more than a million acts of domestic violence each year.1 If the abuser possesses a firearm, an abuse victim is 5 times more likely to be killed than if there were no firearm in the household. 2

More than half of women murdered with guns are killed by family members or intimate partners.3 Female intimate partners are more likely to be murdered with a firearm than all other means combined.4 In 2005, among male intimate partner homicides, 37

1 U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, J.Truman, L. Langton, & M. Planty, Criminal Victimization 2012 (Oct.2013) (Table 1) (1,259,390 incidents of domestic violence in 2012), 2 Jacqueline Campbell et al., Assessing Risk Factors for Intimate Partner Homicide. U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice Journal, No. 250, p. 16 (Nov. 2003). 3 J.C. Campbell, D.W. Webster, J. Koziol-McLain, et al., Risk factors for femicide within physically abusive intimate relationships: results from a multi-site case control study, 93 Amer. J. of Public Health 1089-1097 (2003). 4 When Men Murder Women: An Analysis of 2010 Homicide Data: Females Murdered by Males in Single Victim/Single Offender Incidents. 2012. Violence Policy Center. Washington, DC. Retrieved January 17, 2013. http://www.vpc.org/studies/wmmw2012.pdf.

percent were due to firearms violence.5 1 in 6 women and 1 in 19 men have experienced stalking victimization at some point

during their lifetime in which they felt very fearful or believed that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed.6 76% of intimate partner femicide (female homicide) victims have been stalked by their intimate partner, and 54% of femicide victims reported stalking to police before they were killed by their stalkers.7

The states and the District of Columbia consider acts of dating violence and stalking crimeswhy should victims of dating violence and stalking be left unprotected on the federal level? Additionally, the states are hard at work on this issue, with Washington, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Louisiana all making progress this year toward improving protections for victims, but federal protections are also needed for the safety of stalking and dating violence victims across the country. There is ample research to show that victims of these crimes are at serious risk from offenders firearms violence. It is unconscionable that any organization would oppose closing dangerous gaps in federal firearms law that currently allow dating violence abusers and stalkers to possess firearms. It is unconscionable to deny these victims safety from abusive and predatory offenders.

The NRA has recently made some intentionally misleading statements about federal firearms legislation meant to close the gap in protections for victims of dating violence and stalking. On behalf of the thousands of professionals who work daily to protect victims from domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking, we would like to set the record straight. The NRA says the crimes of domestic violence, dating violence and stalking are just disputes between family members. Domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking are crimes in every state. All of these crimes involve patterns of conduct in which an offender intends to terrorize intimate partners, family members. In the case of stalking, this also includes innocent persons 5 Fox, J.A. and Zawitz M.W., Homicide Trends in the United States. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics; 2006. 6 Michele C. Black et al., The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2010 Summary Report, (Atlanta, GA: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011) 7 Judith McFarlane et al., Stalking and Intimate Partner Femicide, Homicide Studies 3, no. 4 (1999).

who are harassed, threatened and spied upon for the purpose of putting the victim in fear of imminent violence. Offenders in domestic and dating violence cases beat the victims, attempt to strangle them, rape them, and threaten the victims with lethal force. These are not family disputes. They are crimes of violence. Research unequivocally shows that allowing a perpetrator of these crimes to have access to firearms increases the possibility that the victim will be killed by a factor of five. The NRA says we dont need these protections because domestic violence is now taken seriously by the legal and criminal justice systems. Any of the thousands of professionals represented by the National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence will tell you that we are far from solving the dangers of domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking. Twenty years after the initial passage of the Violence Against Women Act, the criminal justice system is better trained and resourced to handle these cases, but that alone has not ended domestic violence. To say otherwise is to belittle the suffering of victims whose intimate partners beat them, deny them basic needs like food and medical care, or threaten their lives or the lives of the children. Part of the unfinished work of VAWA is the fields request that Congress close the dangerous loopholes in federal firearms law that leave victims of dating violence and stalking without protection. The NRA says S. 1290 would make the term domestic violence meaningless by adding individuals similarly situated to a spouse and vaguely defined dating relationships to the federal firearms protections. S. 1290 is not changing existing law. The misdemeanor crime of domestic violence prohibition already protects individuals similarly situated to a spouse. (18 U.S.C. 921(a)(33)(A)(ii)) Senator Klobuchars bill would protect victims of dating violence and stalking. Under current law, any person who has been found by a court to be a dating violence abuser or convicted as a stalker can still legally obtain firearms and ammunition. There is nothing vague about the definition of dating partner in S. 1290. S. 1290 adopts existing federal law, which clearly defines dating partner at 18 U.S.C. 2266(10). In fact, S. 1290 would bring the definition of intimate partner in 18 U.S.C. 921(33) in conformity with the definition of intimate partner in the Crimes section of the U.S. Code.

The NRA says that stalking is an undefined class of offense that does not necessarily include violent or even threatening behavior. Most state misdemeanor stalking laws require evidence of a fear of bodily harm, injury, sexual assault, or death to the victim or someone else. Stalking is also a federal crime. (18 U.S.C. 2261A) The existing definition of stalking in federal law is conduct pursued with the intent to kill, injure, harass, or place under surveillance with intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate another person, or place that person in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury. Stalking is a dangerous crime, which research shows is a red flag for lethality.8 The experience of professionals working with victims of stalking aligns with the evidence: stalkers engage in escalating, threatening behaviors that put victims in fear of death. If a court has found a person guilty of stalking behaviors as defined above, those adjudicated offenders should not have access to firearms or ammunition. Our state and federal laws and responses to domestic violence have improved since the federal firearms protections were passed into law. But it is also true that protections for victims of dating violence and stalking have not kept pace. These victimswho are disproportionately femalehave no protection from firearms violence. The member organizations of the National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence support closing the loopholes in the extremely important federal firearms protection to protect the safety of victims of dating violence and stalking. We urge you to support S. 1290.

8 Judith McFarlane et al., Stalking and Intimate Partner Femicide, Homicide Studies 3, no. 4 (1999), p. 3.