Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In the United States, more than one in three women report experiencing abuse from a partner in their lifetime. The effects of this abuse are far-reaching, impacting not only individual victims, but also their families, and their communities. However, when domestic abusers have access to guns, the effects can be deadly. This nexus between guns and domestic violence makes the US the most dangerous country for women compared to other high-income countries. This deadly intersection between guns and domestic violence is uniquely American problem. Everytown for Gun Safety’s analysis of mass shootings from 2009 to 2017—incidents in which four or more people are shot and killed, not including the shooter—shows that in at least 54 percent of these incidents, the perpetrator shot a current or former intimate partner or family member. However, women of color experience harsher consequences of this abuse, due largely to structural disadvantages including poverty, racial residential segregation and household income inequality. Compared to white women, Black women are twice as likely to be fatally shot by an intimate partner, but this disparity between Black and white women reflects broader firearm homicide trends in the US: Black women are nearly four times more likely than white women to be shot and killed. Hispanic women also experience high rates of domestic abuse and gun violence. More than three out of five Hispanic female homicides are committed by intimate partners, and a firearm is used in nearly half of these deaths. This is likely to be an undercount because socioeconomic factors, fear of discrimination and deportation discourages immigrant Hispanic women from seeking help from authorities. While this remains to be a problem there is even alarmingly little data on the intersection of firearms and domestic violence among populations such as Alaska Native and American Indian women, people with disabilities, and segments of the LGBTQ community who are disproportionately impacted by guns and domestic violence. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) collects limited data on gun violence, and the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) does not yet cover all 50 states. Evidently there is a need for more comprehensive research on intimate partner homicides and update national crime surveys and reporting systems that include victim/perpetrator data on underrepresented populations.