Close New York’s deadly loophole
The recent mass shootings in Rancho Tehama, Calif., and Sutherland Springs, Texas, have left us reeling with grief, filled with outrage and craving answers. Both gunmen, with histories of domestic violence, were prohibited from having firearms in their possession. Yet each went on a shooting rampage with semiautomatic rifles that left scores dead and many more wounded.
The events underscore the danger posed by firearms in the hands of domestic abusers. The current legal system is riddled with loopholes that fail to adequately protect their victims and the public from gun-wielding convicted batterers.
The connection between domestic violence and lethal gun violence is far greater than many realize. According to a recent report by Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit which advocates for gun control and against gun violence, more than half of America’s mass shootings between 2009 and 2016 involved intimate partners or other family members.
We know, too, that domestic abuse is rarely a singular occurrence. It often escalates into greater violence over time frequently resulting in the death of the victim. One study by the Department of Justice found that a domestic violence victim is five times more likely to be killed if their abuser is in possession of a gun.
In 2013, nearly one quarter of all homicide victims in New York were in a domestic relationship with their killers. Each month, 50 American women are shot to death by an intimate partner, and nearly a million women alive today have been shot, or shot at, by their partners.
In order to remove firearms from the hands of domestic violence offenders in New York State, we must correct an inconsistency that currently exists between federal law and state law which allows some convicted domestic violence offenders to retain firearms that have been purchased prior to the conviction.
Both federal and state laws block anyone convicted of a domestic violence crime from purchasing new guns regardless of the severity of the wrongdoing. But while federal law stipulates that someone found guilty of a misdemeanor domestic abuse charge cannot possess any firearms, New York statute requires that only those who commit certain serious crimes will have their licenses to possess or carry revoked and immediately turn in any guns they already own.
It does not provide, as does federal law, for the surrender of these dangerous weapons if the crime is a misdemeanor for domestic violence.
One might ask why New York should adopt a law if it is already in federal statute. That’s because criminal intimate partner abuse cases are adjudicated in state, city, town and village courts, not federal courts. State and local judges do not use federal law unless it is codified in the state penal code.
New York’s inconsistency with federal law on misdemeanor gun possession means that state and local judges, who sentence these perpetrators, lack a clear legal standard to enforce a full firearm ban. This is a dangerous and potentially deadly loophole.
To address this problem, we have introduced legislation that would require anyone who is found guilty of a misdemeanor domestic violence crime to immediately surrender all firearms in their possession upon conviction.
Based on conservative estimates, there were 45,000 reported misdemeanor domestic violence crimes in New York State in 2016 alone. This legislation would outline an unambiguous legal procedure, provide uniformity in the courts and ensure that abusers cannot keep the guns they are prohibited from possessing.
While we lead in New York with some of the strictest gun laws in the nation and the lowest firearm homicide rates, domestic violence victims in our state are still in danger. As a result of these recent shootings, we have come to face the fact that no New Yorker is safe from the lethal rage of an armed domestic abuser, even those with no relationship to his victims.
We must work together to find ways to combat domestic violence and reduce the danger that perpetrators pose to victims and communities alike by enacting common-sense solutions that will save lives.
We must do everything possible to prevent massacres like the ones in Rancho Tehama and Sutherland Springs from ever happening here in New York.
Paulin represents Scarsdale, Eastchester and Bronxville in the state Assembly. Savino represents Brooklyn and Staten Island in the state Senate.