Killer Boyfriends and Guns

This week, for two days in a row, we saw high-profile killings of women by former boyfriends. On Monday, a University of Washington researcher was shot to death in her office by a man who then killed himself. On Tuesday, a hotel worker was killed at the CNN Center in Atlanta. While statistics show that women are less likely to be murdered than men ("females accounted for 24% of total homicides in 2000"¹) their killer is much more likely to be a spouse or intimate acquaintance ("almost half"¹) than a stranger. According to Susan Sorenson, School of Public Health, UCLA, "intimate partner homicides composed only 4% of the murders of men but about one-third of the murders of women."²

Rather than focus on the challenges of domestic abuse or the problems that occur when someone in a bad relationship can easily get a gun, columnist Bob Allen on Wednesday decided that the blame for tragedies like these should be placed on people who "cannot carry a weapon... without asking permission of the government." In describing the murder of Clara Riddle in Atlanta, rather than blame the shooter, Allen quickly found a different culprit: an unarmed witness:

Clara's tormentor ordered Charles out of the way, and instead of standing his ground to defend an obviously distressed woman, he obeyed the thug's order and let them pass.

Charles' choice was to go in search of a guard instead of personally coming to the woman's aid, and the tragic result is that Clara is now dead.

Allen ignores the fact that an armed security guard responded immediately. But, to the gun pushers, every crime, every accident, every tragic incident that happens in America could somehow have been made less deadly by adding even more guns to the mix. In their rhetoric, a gun is a magical shield that never fails to protect the innocent, and always brings down the bad guy. The reality is much more complicated, but subtleties do not advance an ideology.

Guns do not instantly and always make people safe. To suggest otherwise is irresponsible at best. And to suggest that Charles Williams - whose only alleged failing was that he did not carry a gun - has some moral responsibility for the death of Clara Riddles is simply unconscionable.

FOOTNOTES
1. Private Guns, Public Health, David Hemenway, p.122.
2. Evaluation Review, V.30 N.3, June 2006, Special Issue: Intimate Partner Violence and Firearms, Susan B. Sorenson ed.

(Note to readers: This blog entry, as well as past blog entries, are co-posted on www.bradycampaign.org/blog and www.huffingtonpost.com)