The pandemic has been an especially lethal period for victims of domestic abuse.

View this email in your browser ([link removed])
[link removed]
[link removed]
Paige Mitchell, Ashlee Rucker, and Jazmine Willock were all killed by partners or ex-partners who legally should not have been allowed to have guns, authorities say.

The pandemic has been an especially lethal period for victims of domestic abuse.

In 2020, gun homicides involving intimate partners rose a stunning 25% from the previous year, the highest level in almost three decades, ​​according to never-before-published FBI data. Over the last decade, that figure has jumped 58%.

Our new investigation shows that many of these killings were entirely preventable.

From 2017 through 2020, reporter Jennifer Gollan identified at least 110 intimate partners and others who were fatally shot by offenders using weapons they weren’t allowed to possess under federal and, in some cases, state law.

The true numbers aren’t known; the federal government does not track the number of people prohibited from possessing firearms who go on to kill their intimate partners.

People convicted of a felony can’t possess a firearm, nor can offenders who have been convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor or who are subject to family violence protection orders, under federal law. Thanks to those last two provisions, domestic violence homicides plummeted in the mid-1990s.

But they’re sharply rising again, exposing the system’s fundamental weaknesses.

Federal gun laws and the vast majority of state statutes share a glaring flaw: They don’t address how to get guns away from people who aren’t supposed to have them. They don’t say how offenders who are banned from possessing firearms should surrender them or spell out procedures for confiscating them. They don’t create the legal infrastructure that is essential for keeping abuse victims, their families and communities safe from dangerous offenders.

Instead, around much of the country, these gun laws are enforced on an honor system that relies on people who are prohibited from possessing firearms to disarm themselves.

Read the story, which we published in partnership with The Guardian: How America’s Gun Laws Are Failing Domestic Violence Victims ([link removed])

Listen to the podcast: When Abusers Keep Their Guns ([link removed])

Watch the documentary, produced in collaboration with Al Jazeera English’s “Fault Lines”: Unrelinquished ([link removed])

We’re staying on the story, and we need your help. Please tell us ([link removed]) if you know of someone who was shot by a domestic violence offender who was prohibited from having a gun or if you are an official with information we should know.

The truth won’t reveal itself. Help us deliver the stories that make a difference. Donate today.
Donate ([link removed])

============================================================
** Twitter ([link removed])
** Facebook ([link removed])
** Website ([link removed])
Copyright © 2021 The Center for Investigative Reporting, All rights reserved.
You're on this list because you signed up for The Weekly Reveal newsletter.

Our mailing address is:
The Center for Investigative Reporting
1400 65th St., Suite 200
Emeryville, CA 94608
USA
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can ** update your preferences ([link removed])
or ** unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])
.