Why Congress should renew Violence Against Women Act
March is supposed to be a good month for women.
It’s Women’s History Month, after all, a time to celebrate the oft-forgotten achievements of women and to remind ourselves that we’ve come a long way, baby, but we’ve got a lot further to go.
The March 16 killing in Atlanta of seven women and one man, including six women of Asian descent, painfully reminds us of the vulnerability of women to misplaced, irrational male anger. A young white man has been charged with their murders.
It is one more horrific reminder of the racist scapegoating of Asian Americans during this pandemic year, and of the relentless objectification of Asian women. It also reminds us, as if we need the help, that easy access to guns, and their glorification, is an American crisis.
In an unintended stroke of irony, one day after the tragedy in Atlanta, the House voted to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, which then Sen. Joe Biden originally introduced in Congress. When it became law in 1994, the act was a landmark piece of legislation.
It allocated $1.6 billion for investigating and prosecuting violent crimes against women and created a rape shield law that prevented prosecutors from tarnishing female victims by introducing their sexual histories in court. The act also provided funding for battered women’s shelters and for programs aimed at preventing domestic violence.
The Violence Against Women Act lapsed in 2018, but amid alarming reports about a rise in domestic violence during pandemic lockdowns, lawmakers were persuaded of the urgent need to reinstate it.
The House approved reauthorization of the act with a bipartisan 244-172 vote. The language, by the way, is gender neutral, as intimate-partner violence is obviously not limited to heterosexual relationships. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men experience severe intimate partner violence and/or stalking.
The act improves services for victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking, and provides new protections for young victims of violence, including adding funds to improve screening for intimate partner violence. It ensures that violence survivors can remain housed in the event of a breakup with a spouse.
At this point, you might be wondering, why did 172 Republican House members vote against it? (Twenty-nine Republicans supported it.)
Would it surprise you to know their opposition probably has something to do with limits on gun ownership?
The new version of the Violence Against Women Act contains language that would close a quirk of the law known as “the boyfriend loophole.”
Currently, federal law prohibits those convicted of domestic violence from possessing or buying firearms. But it does not apply to perpetrators who have abused current or former dating partners with whom they do not share a child, or with whom they have never lived, thus the name “boyfriend loophole.”
And yet about half of all intimate partner homicides are committed by current or former dating partners.
Closing this loophole doesn’t just makes sense. It’s imperative. States that prevent abusive dating partners from owning guns have 16% fewer intimate partner gun homicides, according to the American Journal of Epidemiology.
However, if you are a gun nut — and by nut, I mean you elevate the right to own firearms above all meaningful violence prevention measures — you would, understandably, oppose this move.
Julia Weber of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence told me that more than a million American women who are alive today have been shot or shot at by intimate partners. I was so taken aback by that number, I asked her to send me written proof, which included another astonishing figure: About 4.5 million women have reported being threatened with a gun by an intimate partner.
Despite the spasms of violence that rock us to our core, we can make our country safer from gun violence. Failing to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act would be a crime.