Senators discuss protecting women from gun violence

Elvin Daniel is helping to raise his sister Zina’s children because she is no longer around to take care of them.

“Every happy milestone is now covered in sadness,” he said. “Mother’s Day is now a day to survive, rather than celebrate because we know that Zina isn’t here to watch over her girls. She won’t be able to take pictures of her youngest daughter dressed up for prom or congratulate her daughters on their wedding day and dance with them. Those moments will be happy and sad at the same time. I’m committed to honor her memory, but working to reduce the number of women killed.”

Zina Daniel Haughton was 42 when she was shot down at her Wisconsin workplace on Oct. 21, 2012, by her abusive ex-husband who also killed two of her co-workers and wounded four others before taking his own life.

Just two days before, an order of protection had been issued against Radcliffe Haughton and his information had been entered into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, but he skirted the law and was able to buy a gun through a website, paying $500 cash to a seller he met in a McDonald’s parking lot.

“It has been nearly two years since Zina was murdered and it is heartbreaking to know that our weak gun laws continue to allow dangerous abusers to buy guns without a background check,” Daniel told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, choking back tears.

With a portrait of his sister in front of him, Daniel, a self-described proud Republican, gun owner, National Rifle Association member and strong supporter of the Second Amendment, testified in favor of common-sense gun laws requiring background checks for everyone and keeping guns out of the hands of abusers.

Daniel was one of five witnesses, most with tragic accounts, at a hearing on the “Violence Against Women Act Next Steps: Protecting Women from Gun Violence.”

“American women are 11 times more likely to be killed with guns than women in any other industrialized country,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who chaired the hearing, filling in for Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. “Put another way, women in the United States accounts for 84 percent of all female firearm victims in the developed world.

“Of all the women murdered in this country, more than half are killed by family members or intimate partners,” Whitehouse said. “If fact, when a gun is present in a domestic violence situation, it increases the risk of homicide [against] women by 500 percent.”

Ranking minority member Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, noting all domestic homicides are tragic, indicated appropriate measures are already in place, such as the Lautenberg Amendment, also known as the Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban, which he voted for in 1996.

He said the law prohibits those convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence or under a restraining order of protection from owning firearms. To be effective, Grassley said the information has to be entered into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, but only 36 states submit any information.

He ran down statistics on some of the worst, noting New York has not submitted any records of misdemeanor domestic violence convictions and only 10 filings on restraining orders.

“Our NICS system is full of holes with respect to the current gun prohibitions, greatly reducing the effectiveness of background [checks],” Grassley said, noting he and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, offered an amendment last year he said would have helped fix the system, but it failed to receive the required 60 votes.

Before the committee are two new bills. One by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., the Protecting Domestic Violence and Stalking Victims Act, would expand prohibitions to include convicted stalkers and people dating, as opposed to just married couples or those cohabitating.

A proposal by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the Lori Jackson Domestic Violence Survivor Protection Act, would prevent someone subject to a temporary restraining order from buying a firearm and expand federal law to protect individuals who have been victims of abuse by dating partners. The bill is named after a murdered victim whose parents were in the audience.

Blumenthal said in most states, people under a temporary restraining order can lose access to their home, children and car, but under federal law, can still keep their guns.

“Somebody might be considered too dangerous to see their son, but not too dangerous to buy a handgun and because of that loophole in our law, abuse victims are the least protected by the laws of our nation at the moment they are in the most danger,” he said.

Joyce Lee Malcolm, Patrick Henry professor of constitutional law and the Second Amendment at George Mason University School of Law, said the proposed bills violate the Second Amendment, a right against unreasonable search and seizure, and due process.

“A fact very seldom advertised is that homicides in this country have been down sharply for the last 20 years, as well as other violent crimes,” she said, noting the last time the rate for serious crimes was this low, the cost of a gallon of gasoline was 29 cents and the average working person made $5,807 a year.

Malcolm said a new focus on stalking and expanding the definition of “intimate partner” to include non-cohabitating individuals would involve not just serious acts of domestic violence, but bullying and a wide range of other acts under the definition of harassment, “which can be verbal and very vague.” She said the result is large numbers of people who might be convicted of verbally harassing someone would lose their right to own a firearm.

Malcolm said a mere allegation could have police searching homes for firearms without any kind of a hearing, calling it “sentence first, verdict afterwards.” She said another troubling aspect is the laws would be retroactive so many people who have accepted plea bargains with the intent of knowing what that entailed would find they no longer have a right to be armed for the rest of their lives.

Justice Seamus McCaffery, of the Supreme Court in Pennsylvania, asked where all the newly convicted people would be housed, noting there has been a movement to reduce prison populations.

He said to keep in mind there are two parties — the accused and accuser and that his goal has always been to have a level playing field.

He suggested a more proactive approach to deal with the problem is prevention, saying police have GPS technology and can know if a convicted stalker is approaching his victim and can get there to prevent violence before it happens.

Justice McCaffery said legislation is great, but at the end of the day, some woman in a row house in North Philadelphia is going to be battered, probably has been for years and when the case comes to court, she and her abuser kiss and hug and the case disappears, leaving a frustrated prosecutor and even more frustrated police.

“My point is we need to do things that really make things happen,” he said. “You want to send a message out there, you put that bracelet on the abuser, you come within a mile of that victim and not only will you be locked up, but it will be strict, it will be swift and it will be really really bad for you.”

Racine County, Wisconsin Sheriff Christopher Schmaling said he is also a conservative Republican, but is in favor of the Klobuchar and Blumenthal proposals.

He said more than half of the women murdered each year are killed by intimate partners, increasingly by boyfriends, and that domestic violence not only poses a threat to the victims, but to his deputies.

“Any cop will tell you that domestic violence calls are the most dangerous calls that law enforcement officers respond to,” he said. “The last thing that victim needs and the last thing my officers need is a dangerous abuser armed with illegal weapons. Abusers routinely threaten to shoot my deputies prior to our arrival at domestic violence calls.”

Schmaling said FBI statistics show 150 law enforcement officers have been killed in action while responding to domestic disturbances.

The United States has a higher homicide rate of women than all other westernized countries and is among the highest in the world, according to Dr. Jacquelyn Campbell, professor and Anna D. Wolf chair at John Hopkins University School of Nursing, who said she was testifying as a citizen, nurse and with the endorsement of the American Academy of Nursing.

“This disparity is particularly pronounced for homicides of women committed by guns, in which the country’s rate exceeds by 11 times the average rate in other comparable countries,” she said.

A video of the hearing may be view on the committee’s website at www. judiciary.senate.gov.