Supreme Court Gun Ruling Likely to “Cost Women's Lives”
On Monday, June 28, in a 5-4 ruling expected to have wide-ranging implications, the U.S. Supreme Court put in jeopardy Chicago’s gun ban, likely stripping the city of its right and ability to protect its citizens from firearms. Family Violence Prevention Fund President Esta Soler expressed alarm that the decision will “result in more victims of abuse being injured and killed, and more of their children being victimized and traumatized. It is a dangerous, disappointing step backward that could cost women’s lives.”
In McDonald v. Chicago, the Court ruled that the right to self-defense protected by the Second Amendment limits not only federal power, but also that of state and local governments to regulate guns. The Justices returned Chicago’s gun control law to lower courts to decide whether it can be reconciled with the Second Amendment, but experts do not expect it to stand.
“Guns and domestic violence are a lethal combination that injure or kill women in this country every day – and the carnage and trauma will almost certainly worsen in the aftermath of this ruling,” Soler said. “In holding that the private right to bear arms for the purposes of self defense applies to the states, the Supreme Court has stripped cities of the ability to protect citizens from the potent and pervasive threat of violence from firearms.”
“Today’s ruling will likely result in more guns in the hands of more dangerous and abusive individuals in more states,” she added. “It will result in more victims of abuse being injured and killed, and more of their children being victimized and traumatized. In finding that ordinances such as Chicago’s gun ban are unconstitutional, the Court has effectively abridged the right and ability of states and localities – which better understand the dangers to their citizens – to regulate the sale and possession of handguns.”
New Legal Challenges Emerge
Gun control opponents are promising to aggressively challenge gun restrictions following the ruling, including laws that prevent domestic violence offenders from owning guns. Counsel for Gun Owners of America Herb Titus told National Public Radio: “I believe that the prohibition against people who have been convicted of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence will probably be the area of litigation down the road.”
In Monday’s ruling, Justice Samuel Alito claimed that the Supreme Court was not calling into question “long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings.” But legal challenges to gun control laws are already being readied.
Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) said after the decision, “While I am disappointed that this decision limits the ability of states and communities to determine how to best protect their residents, we must continue to focus on the reasonable restrictions that are critical to keeping guns out of the hands of felons, terrorists, and domestic abusers. The Supreme Court has made it clear that communities across the country may still enact strong, common-sense regulations to protect the safety of families and reduce gun violence.”
Guns a Threat to Victims of Domestic, Sexual Violence
According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, on average three or four women in this country are murdered each day by current or former husbands or boyfriends. Firearms are the most common weapon used in intimate partner homicides. Guns also are frequently used to intimidate and terrorize victims of domestic violence. Research shows that the mere presence of a firearm – or access to one – increases fatality rates in abusive relationships.
Congress has recognized the threat to victims of domestic and sexual violence and stalking caused by firearms. To try to mitigate that threat, the Violence Against Women Act and the federal Gun Control Act include provisions that prohibit perpetrators who are subject to qualifying protection orders, or who have been convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence crimes, from possessing firearms.
“Those provisions are life saving, but they are not enough,” Soler said. “While the Chicago case has been remanded to a lower court, it is likely that the city of Chicago has appreciably lost its ability to keep lethal weapons out of the hands of batterers.”
Earlier this year, the Family Violence Prevention Fund had joined other non-profit public interest groups in an amicus curiae brief asking the Court to uphold Chicago’s gun ban. The brief is available online.
It is not the first time in recent years that the Supreme Court has addressed gun laws. In 2008 the Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns in another 5-to-4 decision, District of Columbia v. Heller. But that case did not address state and local gun control laws.
Read the new Supreme Court ruling and the dissent.
