In the News

By Vanessa Williams

Days before a gunman entered a small Texas church this month and fatally shot more than two dozen worshipers, Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) quietly reintroduced a bill aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of people involved in domestic violence cases.

The bill would provide grants to state and local authorities to help enforce federal laws that prohibit people who have been convicted of domestic abuse or who have restraining orders against them from buying and possessing guns. Moore doesn’t think the Domestic Violence Gun Homicide Prevention Act is particularly controversial, yet when she first introduced the measure in 2015, it went nowhere.

“It’s a gun bill,” Moore said, with a tinge of exasperation in her voice, when asked why the legislation had stalled.

But after it was revealed that the Air Force had failed to report Devin P. Kelley’s court-martial for domestic violence to the national database used in background checks for gun purchases, some members of Congress, including some Republicans, seem to at least agree with the objective of Moore’s bill.

Last week, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), the majority whip, said he would introduce legislation to “incentivize” federal agencies to do a better job of complying with reporting criminal records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). And Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) joined with Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) to introduce a bill that would require the military to report domestic violence convictions to the NICS.

Eric Harris, a spokesman for Moore, welcomed the attention and hopes it might boost the congresswoman’s bill, which was reintroduced five days before Kelley killed 26 people Nov. 4 during Sunday morning services at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Tex. Kelley, who killed himself after fleeing the scene, had been court-martialed and served time for abusing his wife and toddler stepson.

“We hope that this seemingly newfound Republican concern on the role guns play in domestic violence situations will encourage them to support our bill,” Harris said. “The sentiments appear to exist across the aisle, however sentiments alone are meaningless without action to follow.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) has introduced a companion bill in the Senate, along with a separate measure that would restrict people under temporary restraining orders from buying and possessing guns. Current federal law applies only to those under permanent restraining orders.

Moore was moved to introduce her bill after the 2012 killing of Zina Daniel, a suburban Milwaukee woman who was shot by her estranged husband at the spa where she worked. Six other women also were shot, two fatally, during the rampage. Daniel’s daughter, who also worked at the spa, escaped through a back door.

Daniel had taken out a restraining order against her husband, who bought the gun he used in the shootings from an online arms dealer. He committed suicide at the scene.

More than 55 percent of homicides of women in the country are committed by intimate partners, according to a report this year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Firearms are used in many of those killings.

Moore, 66, who in her 20s was repeatedly beaten and threatened with a gun by a boyfriend, said her bill would provide state and local authorities with money to set up reporting systems and seize the firearms of people involved in domestic violence cases.

“It’s not a do-all, save-all, but we thought if this would result in any reduction in the number of women who are killed every day, it would be great,” she said. “We’re offering grants for jurisdictions that really want to be proactive about reducing that kind of violence in their communities.”

In addition to a Senate companion to Moore’s bill, Blumenthal introduced a bill that would extend federal law to cover individuals under temporary restraining orders. His legislation is named for Lori Jackson, a Connecticut woman who was shot to death in 2014 by her estranged husband, who also seriously wounded Jackson’s mother.

“The narrowly-crafted legislation I introduced in Lori’s name would close the loophole that allows domestic abusers under temporary restraining orders to legally obtain weapons,” Blumenthal said in a statement before the shooting, adding that “continued congressional complicity in this matter is unacceptable.”

Blumenthal said that the “tragic shooting in Texas has drawn national attention to the well-documented and deadly link between domestic violence and guns” and that he was “hopeful that this will create a renewed commitment to ensuring that domestic abusers are kept away from deadly firearms — regardless of whether they’re convicted in military or civilian court.”

There is no guarantee that the new attention to the link between mass shootings and domestic violence will benefit Moore’s and Blumenthal’s bills. On the same day that Cornyn and other senators called for strengthening reporting requirements to make it harder for domestic abusers to buy guns, House Democrats were unable to force a vote on a measure that would have set up a bipartisan committee to address gun violence.

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