Firearms Violence

The NTF supports S. 1298, which addresses the intersection of stalking, dating violence, and firearms violence. Current federal firearms law protects only victims of domestic violence from firearms violence. Victims of the equally dangerous crimes of stalking and dating violence lack those same protections.

Firearms possession and lethality

Research shows that firearms possession by those who commit stalking and domestic and dating violence crimes is an indicator of lethality. Women in the U.S. are killed by intimate partners and stalkers at alarming rates, and firearms play a key role in turning domestic abuse into murder.

• Domestic violence offenders commit more than a million acts of domestic violence each year. If the abuser possesses a firearm, an abuse victims is five times more likely to be killed than if there were no firearm in the household.
• More than half of women murdered with guns are killed by family members or intimate partners. Female intimate partners are more likely to be murdered with a firearm than all other means combined. In 2005, among male intimate partner homicide, 37% were due to firearms violence.
• 1 in 6 women and 1 in 19 men have experienced stalking victimization at some point during their lifetime in which they felt very fearful or believed that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed. 76% of intimate partner femicide (female homicide) victims have been stalked by their intimate partner, and 54% of femicide victims reported stalking to police before they were killed by their stalkers.