118 HRES 827 IH: Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the relationships between firearm violence, misogyny, and violence against women, and reaffirming the importance of preventing individuals with a history of violence against women from accessing a firearm. U.S. House of Representatives 2023-10-30 text/xml EN Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, this file is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain. Whereas more than 1 in 3 women have experienced some form of intimate partner violence, including sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking, in their lifetime, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline;Whereas restricted access to reproductive justice places victims at greater risk of intimate partner violence, according to the National Women’s Law Center;Whereas the majority of intimate partner homicides follow previous incidents of physical violence against the victim;Whereas 61 percent of female homicide victims were killed by an intimate partner according to the Violence Policy Center; Whereas the U.S. National Plan to End Gender-Based Violence recognizes the importance of addressing gun violence in intimate partner relationships in order to address and prevent gender-based violence;Whereas 60 domestic violence and gender-based violence organizations filed a survivor-story amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the case of United States v. Rahimi, demonstrating that domestic violence abusers frequently engage in a pattern of abusive conduct that includes the use of firearms to control, terrorize, and sometimes kill their victims, family members, and members of society at large;Whereas, during the COVID–19 pandemic, domestic violence incidents rose nationally and globally, with this crisis disproportionately impacting women;Whereas, in February 2021, the National Commission on COVID–19 and Criminal Justice (NCCCJ) reported that incidents of domestic violence increased by 8.1 percent after lockdown orders were issued, police departments in communities across the country reported higher calls related to domestic violence and family violence, and domestic violence homicides increased by 4 percent in 2020;Whereas American Indian/Alaska Native, Black, and Latina women are disproportionately killed by firearm-related homicides;Whereas approximately 4,500,000 women alive today in the United States have been threatened by an intimate partner with a firearm and almost 1,000,000 women report being shot or shot at by an intimate partner, according to a 2016 study published in Trauma, Violence, and Abuse;Whereas nearly half of all female homicide victims between 2003 and 2014 were killed by intimate partners, according to a 2017 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association;Whereas homicide is the leading cause of death during pregnancy and postpartum, and deaths from homicides are higher than deaths from sepsis, hemorrhage, and hypertensive disorders, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researchers;Whereas, according to the Giffords’ Law Center, domestic abusers who have access to a gun are 5 times more likely to kill their partner;Whereas domestic violence incidents involving a gun are 12 times more likely to be fatal than assaults involving other weapons or bodily force, according to the Giffords’ Law Center;Whereas an estimated three-quarters of intimate partner homicides in which there were multiple victims involve a firearm;Whereas a 2019 comparison of violent death rates among high-income countries indicates that women in the United States are 21 times more likely to be killed with a firearm than women in other high-income countries;Whereas 91.6 percent of all women killed by firearms in high-income countries in 2015 were killed in the United States;Whereas an analysis of active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2018 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation found that 241 out of 250 incidents involved a male shooter;Whereas an analysis of mass shootings by Everytown for Gun Safety indicates that in 54 percent of mass shootings in the United States between 2009 and 2017 in which 4 or more people were killed, the shooter killed a former or current intimate partner or family member;Whereas, on August 4, 2019, 9 people, including the gunman’s sister, were killed and 27 people were wounded when a shooter with a history of aggression against women, including an incident in which he was suspended from high school for possessing a list of female classmates he targeted for sexual violence, opened fire in Dayton, Ohio;Whereas, on November 5, 2017, 25 people were killed, including a pregnant woman, and 20 people were wounded in Sutherland Springs, Texas, by a shooter with an established history of domestic violence, including a prior conviction for domestic violence against his wife and stepson and a separate investigation into a rape complaint;Whereas, on December 6, 2016, a mother and her 3 children were shot and killed by a former dating partner who had been convicted of stalking a former girlfriend and arrested for battery against a household member, but continued to have access to firearms because of the boyfriend loophole wherein he was not married to the women he abused;Whereas, on June 12, 2016, 49 people were killed and 53 people were wounded when a shooter who was physically abusive toward his wife, including by allegedly beating her while she was pregnant, opened fire in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida;Whereas, on February 25, 2016, a gunman shot and killed 3 people and injured 14 people in Newton and Hesston, Kansas, after being served with a temporary protective order related to an abusive relationship;Whereas, on May 23, 2014, 6 people were killed and 14 people were wounded by being stabbed, shot, or struck by the vehicle of a self-identified member of the involuntary celibate, or incel, group of men who blame women for their sexual frustrations and advocate for violence against them, with the shooter uploading a video and publishing a manifesto detailing his hatred toward women in Isla Vista, California, near the University of California, Santa Barbara;Whereas, on December 14, 2012, 26 students and teachers were killed in a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School after a shooter who previously threatened the life of his mother shot and killed her at home;Whereas 11 percent of background check denials are attributed to a misdemeanor of domestic violence or a protective or restraining order according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics most recent report on background checks for firearm transfers;Whereas the so-called Charleston Loophole, which allows a licensed firearms dealer to sell a firearm to a person after 3 business days even if the background check is not complete, has allowed nearly 2,000 domestic abusers to acquire firearms over the past 2 years;Whereas a 2017 analysis of State firearm restrictions for perpetrators of domestic violence found that firearm prohibition laws that apply to dating partners are associated with a 16-percent reduction in intimate partner homicide;Whereas, under Federal law, domestic abusers are banned from having guns if they are married to or have a child with their partner, but abusive dating partners are still not subject to final protective orders and intimate partners are just as likely to be killed by their abusive dating partners as their abusive married spouses, according to Everytown; andWhereas the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, signed into law by President Biden on June 25, 2022, was the first meaningful gun violence prevention legislation enacted in nearly 3 decades: Now, therefore, be it

That the House of Representatives—(1)acknowledges the need for legislation to better prevent individuals with a history of violence against women from purchasing or possessing a firearm; and(2)supports further research into the relationships among misogyny, violence against women, and firearm violence.