Washington, D.C. — Chelsea Parsons, Vice President for Guns and Crime Policy at the Center of American Progress Action Fund, released the following statement today on the introduction of the Zero Tolerance for Domestic Abusers Act, H.R. 3130, a bipartisan bill introduced by Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) and Robert Dold (R-IL) to close a loophole in the law that allows convicted stalkers and dating partner abusers to continue to have access to firearms. A new poll conducted by Public Policy Polling and released today by the Center for American Progress Action Fund shows that 82 percent of Americans, including 80 percent of gun owners, support this measure.
All of the data, research, and anecdotal evidence has made one thing perfectly clear: Guns and domestic violence are a deadly combination. Guns in the hands of abusers significantly increase the risk that a woman will be killed. This bill is a crucial measure that fixes a dangerous gap in the law that allows convicted stalkers and dating partner abusers to buy and possess guns. Congress should follow the lead of the 18 states that have strengthened their laws to better keep guns out of the hands of stalkers and abusers since 2013 and quickly pass this legislation.
The Center for American Progress, or CAP, has done extensive research into the intersection between gun violence and domestic violence and released a report in July 2014 that highlighted the scope of the problem: Between 2003 and 2012, one-third of all women murdered in the United States were killed by an intimate partner and more than half of those murders involved a gun. CAP’s report describes four policies that states and the federal government should enact to prevent gun access by domestic abusers and stalkers, such as barring all dangerous abusers and stalkers from buying and possessing guns; ensuring that all records of prohibited abusers are provided to the background check system; requiring a background check for all gun sales; and ensuring that abusers surrender any guns already in their possession once they become prohibited.
Click here to read the polling memo.
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For more information on this topic or to speak with an expert, contact Tom Caiazza at [email protected] or 202.481.7141.
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