Suspect in Texas Church Massacre was Thrown Out of Air Force & Jailed for Assaulting Wife & Child
(and a dropped charge of abuse of animals in CO)
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/11/6/suspect_in_texas_church_massacre_was?utm_source=Democracy+Now%21&utm_campaign=6946b389d9-Daily_Digest&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fa2346a853-6946b389d9-191687121
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AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about this man. Again, police say they don’t know the reason for him going to this church, choosing this church, if there was one, and opening fire. But his record is remarkable. He was in the U.S. Air Force. He was arrested for assaulting his wife and his child. And he was imprisoned for a year in the military. This is back in 2012. He is—he leaves the military with a bad conduct—on bad conduct. And because this attack was not a dishonorable discharge, he was legally able to purchase this weapon?
SARAH TOFTE: Yes. While we, like you all, are still trying to figure out all the details around sort of his record and the background check itself, again, we know how essential it is to strengthen our laws to make sure, in particular, that those that have a record of, a history of domestic violence do not get access to firearms. That means expanding the number and types of domestic violence crimes and conduct which would prohibit someone from purchasing a firearm, and then making sure, once an abuser is prohibited, that they have to turn in the firearms we know. We know that these laws work. In fact, recent research from outside academics tell us that laws that prohibit abusers from possessing firearms and require them to turn in the firearms they own are responsible for a 14 percent reduction in firearm gun homicides of intimate partners. Right? So we know these laws can have an impact. We know they can work. But we have a lot of work to do to make sure these laws are as strong as possible.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, the findings in your report, what, since 2009, more than half of the mass killings are committed by usually a white man who has somehow engaged in domestic or family violence before—women in the U.S. 16 times more likely to be killed with a gun than women in other high-income countries, making this country the most dangerous in the developed world when it comes to gun violence against women. Every year, American women suffer from 5.3 million incidents of intimate partner violence. And then you are suggesting that this then, in these cases, goes much larger, why especially it’s critical that this be caught early, not to mention, of course, the horror of the violence committed against the women originally.
SARAH TOFTE: Absolutely. I mean, sometimes—you know, we’ve heard people talk about the link between domestic violence and mass shootings. The domestic violence is often the canary in the coal mine for the ways in which these shooters can have a reverberating impact both on their families and on the communities around them, you know. And again, we would reiterate that we know so much about the links between domestic violence and firearm violence, both in terms of deaths, as you mentioned, but also in terms of the way firearms play a role in domestic violence generally. Four-point-five million women report being threatened with a firearm in their lifetime. One in four victims of domestic violence say that a firearm played a role in the abuse.
We also know, from our mass shootings analysis that you referenced, the ways that children are impacted. Of all the mass shootings we’ve analyzed since 2009, children make up a quarter of the fatalities. And those fatalities are driven by the connection between mass shootings and domestic violence. So, when we think about this, we should be thinking about it both, of course, in terms of the women, the victims; we should be thinking about it in terms of their families. And then, when it comes to mass shootings, we have to think about the impact it’s having on our communities and on this country as a whole.
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