Convicted of Domestic Violence in New York? Give up all your guns

Domestic violence and gun control are two of the biggest hot button issues in the American consciousness today. We don’t always think of the two issues intersecting but a new law in the state of New York has gone into effect that requires people convicted of domestic violence to surrender their firearms to the state. In signing the legislation into law, Governor Andrew Cuomo said, “With this legislation, we can sever the undeniable connection between domestic abuse and deadly gun violence, and continue to build upon the strongest gun laws in the nation.”

As part of his reasoning for signing the new law, Cuomo cited a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that shows that more than half of all female homicide victims are killed by current or former male intimate partners, what the CDC refers to as intimate partner violence (IPV). The CDC analyzed homicide data from 2003–2014 and specifically looked at ethnicity and circumstances associated with IPV.

The analysis of the data is not all together surprising. It found that 55.3% of homicides against females were IPV related, with 79.2% of those homicides being committed by a current partner and 14.3% committed by a former intimate partner. While the study does not say whether the victims experienced ongoing domestic violence before their deaths it did find that 11.2% of IPV related victims experienced violence in the month preceding their deaths. In 29.7% of the cases an argument was a preceding factor.

The other relevant finding of the study was that firearms accounted for 53.9% of homicides of females in the United States. The study did not, however, say how may IPV homicides involved a firearm. That said, it is safe to assume that IPV related homicides that involved a firearm make up a significant portion of all female homicide deaths.

Statistics aside, Cuomo has aggressively sought to bolster New York’s already strict gun laws. Forcing those convicted of domestic violence to give up all guns must not be taken lightly, as it is a serious act anytime a government takes property from a citizen. There are only five states in the country that have statutory procedures for disarming people who have been prohibited from having firearms, New York being one of them. In New York, if a person is convicted of a felony or a serious offense, the court will ask them if they own any guns and if they do the court must order that they surrender their guns.

With the new legislation, certain domestic violence crimes are now considered serious offenses for the purposes of surrendering guns. Selloni says committing an act against a family or household member such as assault, choking, unlawful imprisonment, and harassment in the first degree makes the crime a serious offense.

It will be interesting to see if the change in law will have the intended effect of reducing IPV homicides. There have been some studies that show that states with expansive gun surrender laws for domestic abusers have significant drops in IPV homicides but New York is its own animal. It will also be interesting to see if New York ends up passing even more gun laws and whether there are Second Amendment challenges to this law or any that come after.

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