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/

[niyad]

1. . . . .

[boston bean]

2. Sadly this gets so little attention. But if it were a pitbull thread and some said

Pit bulls were dangerous it would get hundreds of replies.

[niyad]

3. exactly. women are just not that important.

[etherealtruth]

4. To drive your point home .... 34 vs 1,615

Both numbers reflect tragedy and are too many; however, i agree that a "pitbull' thread will garner many, many more responses and spark far more outrage.

2015 dog bite fatality statistics

34 U.S. dog bite-related fatalities occurred in 2015. .

..
Together, pit bulls (28) and rottweilers (3), the second most lethal dog breed, accounted for 91% of the total recorded deaths in 2015. ...
The breakdown between these two breeds is substantial over this 11-year period.
More items...
2015 U.S. Dog Bite Fatalities - Dog Bite Statistics - DogsBite.org
www.dogsbite.org/dog-bite-statistics-fatalities-2015.php

Washington, DC — More than 1,600 women were murdered by men in 2013 and the most common weapon used was a gun, according to the new Violence Policy Center (VPC) study When Men Murder Women: An Analysis of 2013 Homicide Data.

This annual VPC report is being released in advance of Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October. This year’s study applies to 2013, the most recent year for which data is available.

Nationwide, 1,615 females were murdered by males in single victim/single offender incidents in 2013, at a rate of 1.09 per 100,000. The study found that nationwide, 94 percent of women killed by men were murdered by someone they knew. Of the victims who knew their offenders, 62 percent were wives or other intimate acquaintances of their killers.

http://www.vpc.org/press/more-than-1600-women-murdered-by-men-in-one-year-new-study-finds/

[niyad]

6. thank you for that excellent information

[moondust]

5. "Docs vs. Glocks"

The Bloodshed State: Doctors in Florida cannot legally protect children from guns.

K/R

[niyad]

7. I remember hearing something about that--but it is absolutely horrifying to read this

very depressing piece. "brimming over with money from the nra". . . and there we have the insanity.