Not a good mix, evidently...

The new report from Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action
for Gun Sense: “Guns and Violence Against Women – America’s Uniquely
Lethal Domestic Abuse Problem” opens with a tragically unsurprising
story: a woman who’d been abused by her husband for years sought and
received a restraining order.

While this should, under federal law, have prevented him from buying a
firearm, the man exploited a loophole and bought a gun from an
unlicensed online seller, avoiding a background check.

Three days later, he shot and killed his wife.

As the report explains, and common sense would indicate, preventing
abusers from obtaining (or keeping) firearms is an evidence-based way
to protect women. The federal government and many states have enacted
laws to reflect this reality, but gaps and loopholes make it far too
easy for abusers to access guns – and women suffer the consequences.

A survey of women living in California domestic violence shelters, for
example, showed that about two-thirds of the women who lived in
households with guns reported that their partner had used the gun
against them, usually by threatening to shoot or kill her. And
California is not unusual. Research compiled by Everytown shows:

- American women are 11 times more likely to be murdered with a gun
than women in any other developed country.

- The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation makes it five
times more likely that a woman will be murdered.

- More than half of women murdered with guns in the U.S. in 2010 – at
least 54 percent – were killed by intimate partners or family members.

- Over the past 25 years, more intimate partner homicides in the U.S.
have been committed with guns than with all other weapons combined.

This is also true for mass shootings: an Everytown analysis of every
mass shooting in the U.S. between January 2009 and June 2014
determined that in 57 percent (61 of 107 incidents), the shooter
killed an intimate partner or family member.