Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a critical public health and criminal justice issue in the United States. The National Crime Victimization Survey data suggest that from 2004-2013, nearly 950,000 instances of intimate partner abuse occurred annually in the United States. Perhaps the most devastating form of intimate partner violence (IPV) is intimate partner homicide or IPV that ends in death. Guns are the weapon of choice for most intimate partner homicides (IPH). Women living with a gun in the home are nearly three times as likely to be murdered than women with no gun in the home (Wiebe, 2003). In an 11-city femicide (murder of women) study, researchers found that perpetrator access to a gun increase the risk of femicide by an odds ratio of 5.38 (Campbell et al., 2003).

In response to these devastating statistics, the federal government and state legislatures have passed policies designed to prevent abusive individuals from obtaining firearms. While policies were hailed by advocates as lifesaving legislation, limited research evaluates the impact of the laws on IPH. This is because data related to firearms and domestic violence are notoriously difficult to collect. Three studies that do investigate the impact of such laws rely on data from the Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) which includes voluntarily reported data from a handful of states (Raissian, 2016; Vigdor & Mercy, 2006, 2003).

This study adds to the policy research in this area by leveraging a more powerful data source – the Violent Death Reporting System (VDRS) -- to measure the impact the Homicide Prevention Act of 2003 in North Carolina. The VRDS combines information from multiple sources, such as death certificates, medical examiner reports, and incident reports from law enforcement agencies. By combining numerous datasets, the VRDS captures upwards of 99% of all violent deaths in the state. Using data from the Violent Death Reporting System (VDRS) combined with data from the SHR, I more rigorously test the impact of a domestic violence and firearms policy on North Carolinians. This work is crucial for furthering state and federal intervention into the devastating combination of domestic violence and firearms.