Posted on 03/11/2004 8:32:31 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
Victims of domestic violence often don't get adequate protection from the criminal justice system when their abuser has a gun, advocates said Wednesday. A gun control group and a domestic violence center claim many women are slipping through the cracks because judges and police officers don't pay enough attention to the risks a gun poses in a volatile domestic violence case. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said Wednesday that the failure of officials to follow through on gun restrictions show "how difficult it is to get real protection out of a protective order." Clinton joined the Americans for Gun Safety Foundation and the National Network Against Domestic Violence, which are trying to pressure local, state, and federal authorities to strictly enforce the gun restrictions on protective orders. While there are no statistics to show how often non-enforcement of a gun restriction has resulted in a woman's death, other figures show a link between the two issues, according to the advocacy groups' review of federal crime statistics. More than 600 women are murdered and thousands more menaced by abusers with guns, and nearly a third of all women killed in the United States in 2000 were killed by their current or former lovers. Guns were used in most of those homicides. California had 236 such deaths between 1999 and 2001, the most of any state, said Matt Bennett of Americans for Gun Safety. But California is one of the few states to take steps to require protective orders are enforced, he said, becoming "a national model." The California Alliance Against Domestic Violence and other advocates are beginning a yearlong "Safety and the Law" campaign to include brochures, materials provided to domestic violence advocates, lawyers, and law enforcement, and public service announcements on Lifetime Television featuring television stars Kelli Williams, Camryn Manheim and Lisa Gay Hamilton. Clinton spoke at a press conference after Lavon Morris-Grant, a mother of three, described being shot in the head, thigh, and foot by her estranged husband, who then killed himself. Morris-Grant, of Newburgh, N.Y., said it was important for officials to do more "to help other women avoid what happened to me." Federal and some state law prohibits men with protective orders against them from possessing or transporting a gun, but those restrictions are often not closely followed, law enforcement officials say. Sgt. Scott Gibson of the Alexandria, Va., police department said full enforcement of gun restrictions on protective orders is "the vast exception" around the country, and the entire process can be hamstrung by a hitch in paperwork. "A lot of times domestic violence cases with guns aren't handled as strictly or as thoroughly as they should be," said Gibson, who handles domestic violence cases for his department. "Guns in that type of volatile situation raise the lethality for everyone involved, including the police officers." According to some estimates, more than 1 million protective orders are filed every year in the United States. "There are so many opportunities for them to pile up on someone's desk -- a check on a small box will keep it from showing up in the right place, and then no one ever knows about it because it never makes it into any computer database," Gibson said.
"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans to own firearms..." - President Bill Clinton, USA TODAY, March 11, 1993.
"I feel very strongly about it [the Brady Bill]. I think - I also associate myself with the other remarks of the Attorney General. I think it's the beginning. It's not the end of the process by any means." - President Bill Clinton, on the Brady Bill, August 11, 1993.
"You don't need an Uzi to go deer hunting, and you don't need an AK-47 to shoot skeet. They are military weapons, not meant for a day in the country and certainly not meant for a night on the street." - President Bill Clinton, April 6, 1998.
"If you know of any guns in your house or in the houses of your uncles, cousins, friends or neighbors, I want you to promise you will never, ever go near them. I want you to promise you will never, ever play with anybody who goes near them, and I want you to promise you will never, ever pick up a gun with any idea of using it against another person." - First Lady Hillary Clinton, at Valley Cottage Elementary School, March 3, 2000.
I think Alaska also
Yup. Only two unrestricted. We have a lot of work to do
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