Guest opinion: Supreme Court can protect domestic violence survivors

This guest column by Haven Executive Director Erica Aytes Coyle appeared in the Billings Gazette (Nov. 3), the Missoulian (Oct. 31), the Helena Independent Record (Oct. 31), and the Montana Standard (Butte, Nov. 2).

For more than a decade, I’ve heard survivors of domestic violence talk about how guns have been used against them. Even when a gun hasn’t been shot, the threat of firearms in a home that’s already steeped in violence is terrifying. These survivors feel real fear: Fear that they will be killed, fear that their children will be killed. And that fear is not only legitimate, it’s backed up by the reality in Montana. Nearly three out of four intimate-partner murders in recent years involved a gun, according to the Montana Domestic Violence Fatality Commission. 

The link between guns and domestic violence is why we need the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the fear that survivors are experiencing every day in the Gallatin Valley and throughout Montana. The court has the opportunity to strike down a dangerous ruling by a Louisiana-based appeals court that overturned nearly 30 years of federal law: That a domestic abuser who comes under a restraining order now in fact gets to keep their guns. The Court will hear oral arguments on Nov. 7. We urge them to reverse the 5th Circuit decision. Letting this terrible decision stand will endanger survivors, endanger police who take domestic violence calls, and threaten the safety of our community.

First, the ruling is dangerous for survivors. We know that just the presence of a firearm in the home increases the risk of a domestic violence survivor being killed by as much as 500 percent. And gun deaths involving intimate partners have soared in recent years, reaching a 26-year high during the pandemic, with no sign of slowing down. Keeping firearms away from abusers is just common sense. Domestic abusers don’t deserve unfettered gun rights — just like felons, who’ve been subject to gun bans since the 1960s. The vast majority of Americans across partisan lines agree: Eighty-two percent in a recent poll support the federal law banning those convicted of domestic violence from owning a gun.

Second, this ruling is dangerous for police. Domestic violence calls are already some of the most dangerous calls an officer can take. One 14-year study of hundreds of police officers killed in the line of duty showed that about 14 percent were killed on domestic violence calls — 97 percent of those from firearms. Adding more guns to this already deadly mix would mean more injuries and deaths for law enforcement.

Third, it’s dangerous for society for more guns to stay in the hands of domestic abusers. The link between domestic violence and mass shootings is undeniably strong. In nearly half of mass shootings with four or more people killed, the perpetrator also shot a current or former intimate partner or family member. Another study showed that more than half of mass shootings that took place between 2009 and 2018 were related to domestic or family violence. These shootings are not random and public acts of violence. The analysis shows clear connections the court needs to sever when it rules on this case.

The Supreme Court opened the door to this terrible 5th Circuit ruling on domestic abusers when it struck down a century-old gun control law last year, saying the law had to go because it wasn’t part of America’s “historical tradition.” Since then, lower courts have ruled that felons and domestic abusers are free to now own guns because no such laws against it existed in 1799 — a time when many of today’s laws didn’t exist, including those against human trafficking or owning other people as slaves. The Supreme Court can close that door by affirming the 30-year-old law the 5th Circuit threw out. By doing so, it will be ruling in favor of the safety and security of survivors, police officers, our kids, and our communities.