Last October, during Domestic Violence Awareness Month, Disarm Domestic Violence — a collaboration between the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), Prosecutors Against Gun Violence (PAGV), and the Alliance for Gun Responsibility — published its inaugural blog. Each month for the last year, we have amplified different perspectives on domestic violence. We have featured guest blogs from multiple survivors of domestic violence, a legislator, a law enforcement officer, a prosecutor, and others. …

In 2014, I went through my first domestic violence experience — with a man I was with for 8 years. We had built a life together. We had one child together who is now ten, and he had two children from a previous marriage that also lived with us full time. We were a family. But unfortunately, our relationship and our family suffered because of his constant infidelity.

After going through so much in the relationship with his cheating, the love and respect I once had for him was fading. I tried to leave him almost every year that we…

Even before I was a member of the Washington State Senate, I was a prosecutor in Washington’s largest county and a founder of an anti-domestic violence organization, Chaya. I’ve seen the pain and loss that occurs where domestic violence and firearms intersect. These tragedies, often overlooked by the news media and left out of the headlines, are key to understanding what gun violence looks like in our country.

Millions of women have been threatened with firearms by abusers. In an average month, 50 women in America are shot to death by their abusive partners. Many mass shootings involve incidents of…

Any form of domestic abuse, whether it is physical, emotional, or financial abuse, is used for the purpose of controlling the intimate partner who is the target of the abuse. In cases where an abuser uses firearms violence to terrorize an intimate partner, the intimate partner’s risk of homicide immediately escalates to inescapably dangerous levels.[1] Domestic violence and firearms are a lethal combination.[2]

A large metanalysis of research on firearms violence in intimate partner relationships found that approximately 4.5 million women in the U.S. today have reported being threatened by their intimate partners with firearms violence. …

Just after 5:00 a.m. on February 25, 2014, Kevin Palmer walked more than two miles from his parked truck to the home where his estranged wife and son were staying with her parents in Glade Spring, Virginia. He was carrying a rifle and a revolver in his belt holster. The bulky 44-year-old Palmer smashed out a window in the residence’s garage and broke through the garage’s interior door, forcing his way into the home. He shot his father-in-law, Terry Griffin, 75, and his wife, Kristin Palmer, 46.

Kristin’s 17-year-old son Griffin called 911 to say that two people had been…

Abusers with firearms pose a unique danger to their victims, their communities, and to law enforcement officers, as domestic violence calls are the most dangerous for responding officers. The research is clear : domestic abusers should not have access to firearms, and retrieving firearms from people who are prohibited from possessing them — whether by court order, state, or federal law — saves lives. That’s where my fellow officers and I get to work.

Baltimore is proud to be at the forefront of a growing movement to protect victims and survivors of domestic violence by improving enforcement of protective orders…

I didn’t always want to be a prosecutor. As a child, I was shy and lacking confidence. I never would have imagined that my career would consist of non-stop public speaking. Life, however, will send you down the right path if you let it. I worked as a legal secretary at a civil litigation firm while a Biology major at the University of California, Irvine. Initially, I had no real interest in the work- I was just trying to pay for rent and tuition. However, I quickly learned that clients were coming to the attorneys for help when they were…

It’s been eight years since I ran out of my master bedroom past my husband who was shooting me, screaming for our children to get out of the house and call 911. My daughter sent her little brother to get help and came to see what was happening. As I ran from the house she witnessed her father shooting me in the back before turning the gun on himself. My son flagged down cars on the road until someone finally stopped, and he pleaded with them to call 911. They thought he was playing a practical joke.

During surgery, with…