The Administration's Dangerous 'Gun Rights' Plan Puts Women at Risk

by Rachel Graber

Recent reporting indicates the Trump administration plans to automatically restore the gun rights of those with criminal convictions, in contradiction to the federal law governing firearm restoration. This recent move, while framed as one of gun rights, puts survivors of domestic violence at significant risk. 

“This is dangerous. This isn’t political — this is a safety issue.” 

So said former Justice Department pardon attorney, Elizabeth G. Oyer, in an interview with the New York Times, referring to the Trump Administration’s reported plan to restore firearms access to individuals prohibited under federal law from possessing, receiving, shipping, or transporting firearms, including convicted domestic abusers. Ms. Oyer was fired after refusing to recommend the restoration of Mel Gibson’s firearm access absent facts demonstrating he no longer poses a risk to an intimate partner or to society. 

Mr. Gibson’s star power may have drawn readers in, and may have been the immediate cause of Ms. Oyer’s dismissal. But the Mel Gibson case is simply the hook for a shocking revelation: As someone with deep expertise in domestic violence and the ways in which abusive intimate partners use firearms as a tool of power and coercive control, I was appalled to read about a working group within the Department of Justice proposing that firearm access should automatically be restored to adjudicated domestic abusers. The federal law that allows for what is called “relief from disabilities” clearly envisions an individualized process in which the burden is on the prohibited person to establish that “the applicant’s record and reputation. . . are such that the applicant will not be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety and that the granting of the relief would not be contrary to the public interest.”

This op-ed is not about Mel Gibson or punishing him for his history of domestic violence — he is simply the test case for a very harmful proposed policy. This is about the approximately 51 million American women who are physically or sexually abused or stalked by their intimate partners in their lifetimes, the 19 million American women who are threatened by an abusive partner with a gun, and 8 million American women who are shot, pistol-whipped, sexually assaulted, or otherwise harmed with a gun by their intimate partners. This is about the one-in-three child victims of gun violence who are killed as part of a domestic violence incident and about the pregnant and postpartum women who are more likely to die at the hand of an intimate partner than of any obstetric cause. This is about protecting women, families, and communities.

Domestic violence, also often referred to as intimate partner violence, is the use of physical violence, sexual violence, stalking, and threats of violence to exert and maintain power and coercive control by one intimate partner over another. (It also typically includes economic abuse and emotional and psychological abuse, but these are not encompassed in the criminal definition of domestic violence that would cause someone to lose their firearms.) Domestic violence is typically cyclical, with violence escalating, then subsiding, then escalating again. It can continue for years or even decades after a victim leaves the abusive partner, with the abuser stalking, threatening, and assaulting the victim. 

In other words, domestic violence is a coordinated campaign of terror that’s all about controlling another person, taking away their agency, their freedom, and their sense of self. It’s about intentionally harming the person the abusive partner claims to love, or their children, or their families, not a spur of the moment incident resulting from anger or the abuse of alcohol or drugs. A common refrain among abusive intimate partners is, “If I can’t have you, no one will.” In the United States, every sixteen hours, a man makes good on this threat to his female intimate partner, usually using a gun.

And while most domestic violence convictions are for misdemeanor crimes, this is more an artifact of our court system and the pressures placed on both prosecutors and victims than a reflection of the seriousness of the crimes. Most misdemeanor domestic violence crimes actually involve felony-level violence, and were they committed against someone other than an intimate partner, they would result in a felony conviction. However, domestic violence cases are both distressingly common and difficult to prosecute, with victims often being unwilling to testify for safety or other very legitimate reasons. And while we have made great strides as a country in our response to domestic violence, it is still too frequently minimized. When a stranger or an acquaintance wraps their hands around a person’s neck, cutting off their airflow, preventing them from breathing, causing them to lose consciousness, that’s a very serious crime. But too often, perpetrators of domestic violence are often offered the option to plead down to a misdemeanor crime. 

To be clear, we fully believe that people who commit domestic violence can change. They can heal and overcome the spiritual sickness that leads them to cause harm to others. But we also do not believe that happens automatically. If a person can prove after ten or 15 or 20 years that they have changed, that they no longer pose a threat to themselves or others, then okay, sure, give them back their guns. That’s why the statute prohibiting people convicted of domestic violence from having guns also includes a mechanism for them getting their guns back. But it needs to be an individual determination based on a fact pattern that clearly demonstrates a profound transformation.

Ms. Oyer saw this, and Ms. Oyer stood up for the people whose safety and very lives would be put at risk by arming domestic abusers. Ms. Oyer is a true patriot, sacrificing her career and blowing the whistle publicly to protect the American people. If the Department of Justice pursues the misguided plan exposed by Ms. Oyer to restore firearm access to individuals convicted of serious crimes, the burden of proof must be on the individual seeking firearm restoration to affirmatively demonstrate that arming them does not pose a danger. Firearms should never be restored if the predicate domestic violence offense involved strangulation, violence against a pregnant woman, sexual violence, or the use of a weapon, nor should firearm access be restored to individuals with multiple domestic violence convictions or convictions for violating a protective order. As with other proceedings related to the predicate case, victims should be given the opportunity to weigh in and be notified of the outcome. DOJ must consider each domestic violence case individually and with great care to determine whether the person has truly, fundamentally changed.

Last October, President Trump told a cheering crowd that he would “be a protector of women, whether they like it or not.” If he is serious about this promise, the administration would do well to reconsider this position.

Rachel Graber is Jewish Women International’s Vice President of Government Relations and Advocacy.