Most Mass Shootings Target Women and Families; Study Finds Men With Legal Guns Are to Blame

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/most-mass-shootings-target-women-and-families-study-finds-men-legal-guns-are-blame



A new analysis of 56 mass shootings across America since 2009 finds women and family members are the most frequent victims, and that the shooter almost always acquired his guns legally, in cases where the gun source is known.

“In at least 32 of the cases (57 percent), the shooter killed a current or former spouse or intimate partner or other family member, and at least eight of those shooters had a prior domestic violence charge,” the Mayors Against Illegal Guns report on mass shootings said, suggesting that the problem of gun violence is far more related to violence against women in homes than rampages in public settings such as schools and theaters.

The study also found that in the cases where the source of the guns was known, almost all were acquired legally: only two examples were given of mass killings with a stolen or illegal gun. That finding runs counter to the gun lobby’s oft-cited rhetoric that only criminals abuse guns.

“We had sufficient evidence to judge whether the shooter was a prohibited gun possessor in 42 of the 56 incidents,” the report said, referring to laws barring ex-felons, mentally ill people, drug addicts and other categories of people from owning guns. “Of those 42 incidents, 15 (36 percent) involved a prohibited possessor and 27 (64 percent) did not.”

[boston bean]

1. Domestic violence!

Something we just have to accept, I guess. (I am being sarcastic).

Approx. 3 women a day are killed by their significant other.

It's become such a part of normal part of our culture hardly anyone notices anymore.

Thanks for posting.

[Demeter]

6. And while it was in force, the Violence Against Women Act cut it by 30%

so that means we will not restore the law...of course.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

29. exactly. it's background...like music or wallpaper.

Titillating, even. Media loves the dead pretty women.

Never a word about men who have absorbed the violent culture and entrenched contempt for al things feminine---and the cowardly ease of exercising their aggression on those who are weaker: WOMEN.

[freshwest]

33. Needs to be said, all of it.

[xchrom]

2. 5 reasons why looser gun laws won't guarantee women's safety

http://www.nationofchange.org/5-reasons-why-looser-gun-laws-won-t-guarantee-women-s-safety-1361716818

In the wake of the tragedy at Newtown and the growing bipartisan support for sensible gun safety regulations, the gun manufacturing lobby has advanced a particularly noxious lie: that an unchecked, free-for-all gun market could guarantee women’s safety. In reality, gun violence has a particularly devastating impact for women, who suffer from domestic violence at stunning rates. This week alone, at least 11people were shot in domestic violence related incidents. Here are the facts about women and gun violence:

1. Women care about gun safety. A recent poll released by the Pew Research Center revealed a stark gender divide when it comes to support for common sense gun violence prevention measures—a 21-point gap between men and women asked about the relative importance of gun violence prevention compared to unfettered access—with women focused on safety. 90 percent of women are concerned about gun violence—and 63% are very concerned.

2. The threat of violence in the home is real. Women are twice as likely to be shot and killed by intimate partners as they are to be murdered by strangers using any type of weapon. American women who are killed by their intimate partners are more likely to be killed with guns than by all other methods combined. Approximately 700 American women are shot and killed by intimate partners each year.

3. Convincing women to buy guns is a marketing strategy, not a public service.Despite gun manufacturer’s rhetoric about protecting women, the reality is that selling women guns is about profit, not protection—as demonstrated above, having a gun in the home is not a guarantee for safety, and actually endangers the 960,000 women who experience domestic violence each year.

4. Stalkers can buy guns. There is currently no federal law prohibiting those convicted of stalking from acquiring firearms. This is particularly disturbing given that stalking is usually part of a pattern of escalating, violent behavior. An abuser’s access to a gun is associated with an 8-fold increase in the risk of homicide.

[HereSince1628]

5. an fyi re #4...restraining orders for stalking -are- mentioned in NICS criteria for prohibition

I'm not saying that the process for getting protective orders shouldn't be improved, or that more effort shouldn't be made to recover weapons when a protective order is issued.

Also, depending upon whether a conviction for stalking mentioned in #4 of above was a misdemeanor or a felony, the stalker would be prohibited from purchase if the sentence trigger of NICS were met...2 years for a misdemeanor and 1 year for a felony.

I completely agree that stalkers present a serious threat, a person convicted of stalking or under a restraining order not only shouldn't be able to purchase a firearm, I think they should be required to surrender all of them in their possession.

MY point isn't that prohibitions against stalking are adequate or that improvement shouldn't be made. My point is that although the statement in #4 may parse out to be technically true, the impression it gives is misleading in as much as it suggests there aren't prohibitions against gun purchases for stalkers.


http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/general-information/fact-sheet
From the list a bit past halfway thru that webpage:

- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Federal Categories of Persons Prohibited From Receiving

<snip>
The federally prohibiting criteria are as follows:
<snip>
The subject of a protective order issued after a hearing in which the respondent had notice that restrains them from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of such partner. This does not include ex parte orders.
<snip>
- - - - - - - - - - - -

[AtheistCrusader]

16. 'Lautenberg Amendment'. Do not pass go, do not collect 200$, Do not have a firearm

on or about your person for the rest of your life or you go to jail for up to 10 years, until a Judge restores your right to possess a firearm. Not JUST a NICS disqualification.

It's a good law, but it needs more of an advertising budget, and without registration, it is difficult for the police to show up, say 'here's your fucking restraining order asshole, hand over XYZ firearms right now or get in the car.'.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

7. +1

Thanks xchrom.

[AtheistCrusader]

18. Depends...

"3. Convincing women to buy guns is a marketing strategy, not a public service. Despite gun manufacturer’s rhetoric about protecting women, the reality is that selling women guns is about profit, not protection—as demonstrated above, having a gun in the home is not a guarantee for safety, and actually endangers the 960,000 women who experience domestic violence each year. "

For situations where the woman still has contact with the aggressor, having a gun in the home might be bad. Certainly so if the aggressor actually has access to the home for visitation, or is still living there in some capacity.

For women who have cut off contact, I think you would see a significant delta from the above scenario, on whether the firearm she possesses represents a greater threat to her than no firearm at all.

We need more peer reviewed research on the vagaries of these situations. That's for certain.


Now, it's important to keep expectations in line. It's not a magic shield. 2 years ago, a female co-worker of mine was staying at a friend's apartment, in hiding. She had a CPL and a firearm. Didn't save her. Shitbag figured out where she was staying, waited in the parking lot, walked up behind her and shot her in the back of the head. If you don't see it coming, you don't even get a chance to fight. A firearm is just a force multiplier, not a magic shield. In that case, her firearm didn't increase the risk to herself, at least not directly. But she didn't get a chance to use it defensively, either.

[Chorophyll]

3. And House Republicans *still* won't move forward on VAWA.

They have blood on their hands as usual.

[freshwest]

34. I grew up hearing 'Keep 'em barefoot and pregnant.' But I thought that was bad. Not to them, though.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

35. ugh! heard this from your family?

I hope not.....

[freshwest]

40. Oh, hell no! My family taught me to be independent, get a career, support myself totally.

And they advised me strongly against having children and not getting under anyone's control. Regarding spousal abuse the saying in my family, although it sounds insensitive, was:

'Hit me once, shame on you. Hit me twice, shame on me.'

It's about breaking trust. I took with me when I left home and had relationships, and decided that being alone was better than putting up with that. Nothing was worth it, not falling into poverty, not becoming homelessness, not being considered moral or pious should hold one back from leaving that relationship. It was why they also cautioned against pregnancy, since it is because of children some people get caught for life.

So it was a complete package, despite problems from the deaths of parents and other people getting involved growing up. Say No, support yourself before you get involved, be independent, don't allow anyone to take you somewhere they will be in control of you. But I don't take it that is the way that some people are being brought up now and I feel bad for young ladies getting stuck.

But that saying, which was about 'keeping women in their place,'was what the good ol' boys said daily on the street, in school, etc. in that area. And as the saying goes 'that train is never late,' since any complaint women might make about anything marital was answered that way.

Of course that was the late fifties and early sixties. Unfortunately, some want to take us back to that or somewhere before that - I shudder to think. Part of their family values, ya know.

Some families valued seeing their kids be all they could be. We knew we weren't in the other group, but they were hard to miss in those days.

[Robb]

4. All gun owners are law-abiding and responsible

until they aren't. K&R.

[CTyankee]

9. Exactly. We experienced this in my own family, so we know it so well.

It is why I tell my story on DU. I do not want to talk about guns but what happened to us is sadly the case over and over and over again. Gun violence by a "law abiding" man that killed one young woman and injured two others. So I speak up on behalf of gun safety. And I will continue to do so.

[NutmegYankee]

17. What happened to your family?

I apologize if you have stated it previously, I don't surf DU daily so I miss a lot of things.

[CTyankee]

23. My niece was shot and killed by her step grandfather. She had gone with her mother to

help care for her grandmother who was dying of cancer. The step grandfather was angry that he was being cut out of the grandmother's will. He got very drunk and went for a handgun he kept in the nightstand (usually loaded) to "protect" their property. He started shooting, wounding the mother and the grandmother and killing my niece instantly. He then put the gun to his own head.

My niece was 24 years old. She had just gotten married a few months earlier. The saddest thing in the world was seeing the young men who were her pallbearers had been ushers at her wedding. My brother, her dad, collapsed in front of her coffin. This happened on the night before Father's Day.

This was not in CT but in a Dallas suburb.

[NutmegYankee]

26. That's so tragic.

It's always heartbreaking to hear of a bright promising young life cut short. I'm sorry this tragedy struck your family, but I do appreciate that you tell the story. Everyone who dies has a story and was loved by someone.

Keep speaking up - you're doing the right thing.

[CTyankee]

31. thank you. I haven't relayed it much because on an earlier occasion I was flatly told by another

DUer that I must have made it up. I gave him/her the date of the event and told them to look up the story that was in the Dallas Morning News, if proof was needed. That really upset me and I have been reluctant to share it since.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

36. there are major asswipes here. as you probably know.

I've been told I was lying too, but the situation was not anything critical.

I am really sorry some jerkoff inflicted that on you--it mist have hurt. .

[CTyankee]

39. well, what it does is make me go back to the whole thing again.

I go over it again and again in my mind and it takes a while to shake it off, if you know what I mean.

to be fair, one of the gun control opponents in that same thread was decent. He said, very simply, that he was sorry for my loss and I made sure to respond to him with thanks and gratitude. So not everyone was an asswipe and some can be mensches.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

28. oh my god....

[countryjake]

47. So sorry to hear your sad story, CTyankee...

Not many words can bring comfort to a family faced with that sort of tragedy, but you and yours have my deepest sympathy.

We have a close friend who lost her young daughter to such a senseless shooting, despite requests for protection, restraining orders, the whole cry for help that is often so common preceding domestic violence homicides. The poor unsuspecting woman died in the parking lot of the restaurant where she worked, shot dead in her car.

Our friend was left to raise her little granddaughter, alone.

[CTyankee]

50. I think there are more instances of gun violence than we want to think there are...

families are often destroyed over the losses...I worry about the Newtown parents and what happens to them going forward. sometimes losses are unsustainable...

[bemildred]

8. And most of the others are work/school related. nt

[marions ghost]

10. No surprise there

Domestic violence is rampant everywhere.

This woman did a Ted Talk on her experience recently:

[SemperEadem]

12. I watched this some time back

her story is harrowing...

[MotherPetrie]

11. K&R

[sheshe2]

13. K&R! nt

[Archae]

14. We can't trust fully those who are supposed to "Defend And Protect" us either.

My cousin's son was shot and wounded in a mass shooting by an off-duty sheriff's deputy in Crandon, WI.

6 others were shot and killed.

[patrice]

25. .

[Jenoch]

53. I don't know if you are aware of this,

but because of that shooting, Wisconsin has changed the standards for who can be hired as law enforcement officers. The POS who did that shooting had virtually no training or screening before being hired as a part time LEO.

[Archae]

54. I'm glad to hear that.

Crandon is up in "Da Nort' Woods," and is pretty rural.

The guy who shot up that bunch of kids had broken up with his girlfriend, (who was one of the victims,) so the shooter went off his nut.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crandon,_Wisconsin_shooting

[samsingh]

15. another fact of how guns kill people

[joeybee12]

19. Damn you with your fancy facts and book lernin'!

KNR

[Squinch]

20. The guns may have been legally purchased, but I wonder how many of the massacres were

perpetrated by those who legally purchased them. Lanza didn't buy those guns, and if Dylan and Kliebold did, it was not legal because they were too young to purchase guns on their own legally.

Shows a need for laws about the responsibility of the legal owners to keep the guns out of others' hands.

[riderinthestorm]

37. Yes, the commonality of all of this is easy accessibility to guns

I'm beginning to believe that any new laws should deal with mandatory safekeeping or the gun's owner faces a fine or jailtime or both if the gun is used in a crime.

[Squinch]

56. I'm with you.

If the gun owner's gun is used in a crime, they are partly culpable for the crime, and should be treated accordingly.

And the TRULY responsible gun owners should actually be the ones fighting for this kind of legislation.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

38. the point s, for all the shock of mass shootings, murders of women by men outnumber them.

Perhaps if mass shootings become even more commonplace, the numbers will catch up--of course, you'd still have to subtract the number of females killed in those mass shootings in order to make a gender comparison.

The point of the OP, however, is that men are killing a lotta women. And children.

[patrice]

21. Women & CHILDREN as sacrifices to NRA's psychotic nationalism. BLOOD on your hands Wayne et al.

[slackmaster]

22. No truly honest discussion of the demographics of violent crime is possible on DU

They get shut down every time.

[L0oniX]

24. Ban ALL guns.

Let me know when that happens.

[mwrguy]

51. +1

[BlancheSplanchnik]

27. how often do women try to point this out and get slagged by the "STOP HURTING OUR FEELINGS!!" dudes?

Last edited Mon Feb 25, 2013, 03:57 PM - Edit history (1)

Why, it happens even here. Still. (Though there is improvement. It's not as bad as it was years ago on DU2, when many women got tombstoned for reacting appropriately--i.e. angrily--to relentless harassment from the immature men. Still, there's now the problem of getting an unenlightened jury.)

Women KNOW that danger to our life and limb comes from (poorly socialized) men. The occasional exceptions where women kill or harm men, are negligible, comparatively.

I'm always amazed by those men who are virtuous in their solidarity with the oppressed, but find it impossible to consider what a woman's experience is like, even when women try to explain it for them.


STOP DENYING THAT MEN ALSO HAVE RESPONSIBILITY to CHANGE !

[roxy1234]

30. You do know

Men are less likely to report a domestic abuse by a female spouse and that will skew the numbers for domestic violence. Also when female abuse turns fatal, they courts are more lenient on them and they sometimes get away with it by claiming prior abuse by the man.

Anyway, I'd be too carefully putting too muck stock in the DA numbers, they might not be telling you the full story.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

32. your "rebuttal" is rather laughable.

I said there are exceptions to the norm. The norm, however is male violence against women.

Welcome to DU, where we value robust critique. Gratuitous denial without respectable sources, however, is gratuitous.

[CTyankee]

41. yeah, that was a pretty lame "rebuttal."

No debating points there...

[Skittles]

43. oh please

not the "us men have it bad too" whine

[noiretextatique]

44. sure...don't trust the DA numbers, don't trust your own experience

just listen to a random internet poster who claims to know "the full story." those numbers mesh quite well with my experience of being a woman for 54 years, so i'll consider them (mostly) the full story.

[countryjake]

46. Are you disputing the rigorously researched stats that 1 in every 4 women...

will experience Domestic Violence sometime in their lifetime?

Or, more importantly, are you actually claiming that in instances of intimate partner homicides, no matter which partner is killed, it is questionable that the woman was physically abused by the man before the murder? Seriously?

Please, cite "the full story" that you've got an inside scoop on.

Lenient courts my ass!

[KG]

42. guns don't make life in america better. they just don't.

[GreenStormCloud]

45. Let'd take a close look at those numbers.

We had sufficient evidence to judge whether the shooter was a prohibited gun possessor in 42 of the 56 incidents,” the report said, referring to laws barring ex-felons, mentally ill people, drug addicts and other categories of people from owning guns. “Of those 42 incidents, 15 (36 percent) involved a prohibited possessor and 27 (64 percent) did not.”

What percentage of the population is prohibited from owning a gun? I don't have a number but I am confident that is way less than 36%.

What percentage of the population can legally own a gun? Almost everybody over age 21. Way more than 64%.

So the prohibited population that illegally has a gun is strongly disproportionately represented in that total. It takes the huge total of all legal gun owners to get almost twice the number of incidents.

Lesson: If a woman is living with a violent criminal she is in danger, whether he has a gun or not. The most dangerous time is within six months of leaving such a person.

If her male partner is a law-abiding type and hasn't shown any violent tendencies, then she is very safe, even if he has guns.

We who are pro-gun rights do NOT claim that ONLY criminals abuse guns. We do claim that it is rare, but does sometimes happen, for a previously law-abiding person to commit murder as his first serious offense.

[undergroundpanther]

48. My father

tried to kill my mom with a gun.She had moved out with me into an apartment,she had to have him sign tax papers on the house.I went into the room first sat down,mom held up the pen and paper for him to sign. He grabbed a gun he had under the chair grabbed mom by the throat and she told me to leave get out,she was barely understandable,my father started yelling to mom,you killed me,and pointed the gun at her,Time seemed to slow down,I leaped over the coffee table and slammed into him,the gun fell (he was drunk) and it went off in the hallway and we both ran out, got in the car,mom pushed my head under the dash as we peeled out of there, bullets were pinging the car. to this day,I hate him even tho he is dead.He ruined our family, the rest of my family still plays make believe. I got ptsd.

Violent men, violent drunks/addicts and sociopaths men or women,need to be stopped restrained,shunned,basically their behavior should never be tolerated by any civilized people. And sometimes the appeasing game just prolongs the pain. Sometimes you do have to put down a rabid dog.

[Tumbulu]

49. Oh of course you have PTSD!

I agree with you. The trouble is that there are not enough jails or prisons. Every time someone goes off about how there are too many people in prison I think about all the men who have shot at me and have served no or little jail time. The male sheriff's think it is just fine for men to just shoot rifles and guns.... At people walking in the countryside, at my barn with me working in it....... Once 15 guys were shooting into my farm and when I called the sheriff all I got was that unless I put up "No Trespassing No Hunting" signs up every 150 ft there was nothing they could do, despite the fact that bullets were going right past our heads while working in the field. Another friend lost her horse to a hunter.... No apology, no restitution, the sheriffs all defend the gun nuts in the rural areas of the west.

I am so sorry that you had to endure such a terrible attack.

[Loudly]

52. Law abiding right up to the moment they aren't.

It almost becomes a joke how the balloon is punctured with their own silly nonsense.

[galileoreloaded]

55. How many vehicular homocides were done with registered and insured vehicles?

It's the same don't ya know.

[Chalco]

57. Oh, gee, what a surprise! Not. nt