Firearms ruling puts domestic violence victims at risk

A federal appeals court’s recent decision on gun regulation has made our country a more dangerous place for victims of family abuse.

The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday struck down a longstanding federal law preventing gun ownership among people who have had domestic violence restraining orders imposed against them.

The court said the law violated the Second Amendment rights of people accused of abuse.

Advocates for victims of domestic violence, most of whom are women, say their clients’ rights are the ones being violated. Their right to go to work. To take their children to school. To freely move about in society without fear of being gunned down by an unhinged husband, boyfriend or family member.

We agree. Particularly troubling is that the appellate court apparently took its cues from the

U.S. Supreme Court, which in June said the government must justify gun control laws by showing they are “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

The courts are interpreting the text of the Second Amendment so strictly that they have abandoned plain common sense. We can’t imagine a universe in which the Founding Fathers intended people credibly accused of the most serious crimes to remain armed and dangerous.

Mimi Sterling, chief executive of Dallas-based The Family Place, said the court’s opinion “strips lifesaving legal protections from survivors of domestic violence.”

Not only does it put survivors in danger, she said, but also all of the other innocent people caught in the crosshairs of domestic disputes. Police, other family members, friends or bystanders in the wrong place at the wrong time are often injured or killed by guns in such situations, Sterling

said.

The presence of a gun in domestic disputes raises the risk of homicide by about 500 percent, Sterling said.

The federal law prohibiting persons suspected of domestic violence from possessing guns has been on the books for nearly 30 years and should stand. We hope the erroneous opinion of the Fifth Circuit is overturned in light of this nation’s longstanding tradition of disarming dangerous people.