Domestic Violence Awareness Month: Guns in Abusive Homes

[niyad]

Domestic Violence Awareness Month: Guns in Abusive Homes


October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, when advocates and survivors push issues facing abuse victims into the forefront of national conversation. Every minute in the United States, 20 people experience violence at the hands of an intimate partner. More than 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men will be the victim of intimate partner violence in their lifetime.

While these statistics are troubling enough, another factor of American culture makes volatile home situations even more dangerous: one in three American adults own a firearm. The chance of a woman in an abusive household being killed by her partner quintuples when a gun is in the home. In 2013, nearly 500 women were fatally shot by a husband or partner. There are a million women in the United States who have survived a shooting by their intimate partner.

But a gun does not have to be fired for an abuser to use it for purposes of physical control. An additional 4.5 million women have been intimidated or coerced with a gun by an intimate partner. This coercive control is effective for the abuser because it enables ongoing control of the victim, and often doesn’t get reported to law enforcement.

A survey of women in 67 domestic violence shelters in California found that of the women whose abusers had access to a firearm, two-thirds of them had used the weapon to threaten and intimidate the victim. A Harvard study found that incidences of hostile displays of firearms for coercive control were more common in America than the use of guns for self-defense.

. . . .

http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2016/10/06/domestic-violence-awareness-month-guns-in-abusive-homes/

[gwheezie]

1. I was held at gunpoint for 48 hours

By my ex husband who broke into my home. I thought I was going to die.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

2. I'll bet there are a lot of women here who've faced violence from men.

Probably some men who've faced violence from women.

You're not alone---and I'm sorry that happened to you! How incredibly traumatic!

[niyad]

5. I am so very sorry this happened to you. I hope he is in prison?

[gwheezie]

9. Karma got him

He was estranged from everyone who had ever cared about him when he died.
I could not get the police to arrest him. He was well connected in the town we lived in. I realized no one would help me & he would kill me some day. So I left work, took a cab to the airport with one suitcase I had kept in my car and got on a plane. I landed 1500 miles away & never went back. Left everything, my house, my car in the employee lot & everything I owned. I never missed anything I left, not even for a minute.

[niyad]

11. glad karma the bitch goddess got him!! you are so incredibly brave to do what you did,

and I am glad you are here. I hope this part of your life is much better.

[Judi Lynn]

10. 48 minutes would have been far, far too long. Best wishes, gwheezie. n/t

[BlancheSplanchnik]

3. Kicking for those tho consider Violence Against Women an important issue

One that needs to be addressed intelligently and systematically.
Education in ethics and humanizing females, education in Emotions and safe ways to express them.

[mpcamb]

4. A campaign issue, one with traction against the worst 'representatives' in existence, is the ban on

allowing medicine and medical research keeping tallies on gun violence and it's outcomes.
othing could be more "head in the sand' than ignoring issues and outcomes and the Tea Partyers and gun lobby got that one done.

It's time to change it. Throw it out in a Congressional session and make them take a stand while the campaign is going on. It'll swing votes.

[niyad]

6. oh, come now, we cannot have actual, real, truthful statistics on gun violence. why, people

might start paying attention to something other than nra propaganda.

[mpcamb]

7. Let's do it-

I think they're expected to actually work most of October .

Throw it out as a legislative initiative.

[niyad]

8. it would be interesting to see--but, do not hold your breath.

[niyad]

12. . . . .