A man shot his ex-wife seven times in front of their two young daughters, killing her before he killed himself.
“In an instant, everybody’s world was shattered,” said the mother of the woman who was killed. “My daughter had a restraining order, and she had a stalking order against him. … Before the incident, there was a judge, there were attorneys, there were counselors, there were therapists and he’d had an order to have his guns taken away. Nobody checked.”
That’s just one of the many harrowing testimonials included in a new report from Everytown for Gun Safety that highlights the dual tragedies of domestic violence murder-suicides perpetrated with a gun. The report, shared exclusively with HuffPost, included the stories of 43 survivors of intimate partner homicide-suicide (IPHS), including survivors of this type of violence, children who witnessed these incidents and other family members and friends who were close to those who died.
These dual tragedies are extremely common in the United States. An incident in which an abuser kills their partner and then dies by suicide happens on average more than once a day, according to a separate study published last year. Of those tragedies, 93% involved a firearm and 95% were women killed by male partners.
Everytown researchers found that cultural stigma around both domestic violence and suicide, in combination with the lack of enforcement of intimate partner violence laws, contributes to this type of violence.
Nearly 1 in 4 perpetrators of intimate partner homicide-suicide were prohibited by law from possessing the very gun used to carry out such devastating violence, according to the Everytown report. Most perpetrators were legally barred from owning a firearm due to a domestic violence restraining order or conviction of a felony or misdemeanor charge of domestic violence.
Intimate partner violence laws have been shown to be effective, but only if implemented. A victim of domestic violence can get a restraining order against her abuser, legally barring the person from owning a gun, but a restraining order means very little if law enforcement doesn’t come to the house and remove all firearms.
“That is a tragic missed opportunity,” Sarah Burd-Sharps, senior director of research at the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, told HuffPost. “The laws work, but they don’t implement themselves.”
“The laws work, but they don’t implement themselves.”
– Sarah Burd-Sharps, Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund
A gun is a “uniquely lethal method” in these settings, Burd-Sharps explained. In cases where suicide is attempted by any method other than a gun, 4% actually die by suicide. When a gun is involved, 90% die. Abusers with access to a gun are five times more likely to kill a female victim, with an average of 70 women shot and killed by an intimate partner every month in the U.S.
In many situations in which there is a domestic violence restraining order, police will ask the victim if there was any suicidal ideation or suicidal history with the perpetrator, but they won’t ask the perpetrator. “It is about domestic violence, so it’s about protecting the victim, but it’s also about understanding the potential for suicidal ideation in the perpetrator,” Burd-Sharps said.
Everytown also found that children were witnesses in 43% of the IPHS cases analyzed. The fallout from experiencing such violence can be catastrophic, with children reporting post-traumatic stress disorder or falling into deep depression. Some later attempted suicide themselves.
These experiences can affect generations. One of the individual risk factors for people to become perpetrators of intimate partner violence is having witnessed or experienced this traumatizing level of violence as children, researchers found.
“We need to understand the risk factors for today’s generation, but we also need to understand it for when the children become adults,” Burd-Sharps said. “Because these kinds of traumatic events, particularly childhood exposure to violence, absolutely affects them throughout their life course.”
In some cases, children were murdered by their fathers. “My second husband was an abuser and we had a two-year-old daughter together,” one testimonial included in the report says. “And when I realized that he was an abuser, because I didn’t realize it at the beginning, I finally got him moved out of the house. A few months later he murdered our two-year-old daughter and committed suicide.”
There are also cases of “family annihilation” or “familicide” ― terms used by Everytown to describe when an abuser kills two or more family members before killing themselves.
“Familicide and intimate partner violence is not a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Doreen Dodgen-Magee, a Moms Demand Action volunteer and senior fellow with the Everytown Survivor Network, told HuffPost.
“It’s the reality of stories like mine: sustained emotional and physical abuse, families fleeing to safety, abusers gaining easy access to firearms and loved ones being shot and killed — sometimes in the front yard of their grandmother’s home, like my nieces and sister-in-law were,” said Dogen-Magee, whose sister-in-law and three nieces under the age of 6 were killed by their husband and father. “What breaks my heart the most is knowing that mine is just one experience out of many represented in this research. As my family’s story shows, this kind of violence is everywhere.”
But because of societal stigma, many people simply don’t want to talk about intimate partner violence or mental health issues ― and when these issues aren’t discussed openly, it can have devastating consequences. In some cases, researchers found that the victim’s mother or mother-in-law was aware there was domestic violence in the house but didn’t know the abuser had a gun. Or they knew there was a gun in the home but didn’t realize there was violence.
“If we take away the stigma and bring this into the light, maybe lives can be saved,” Burd-Sharps said.
Head here to read the Everytown for Gun Safety report in full.
Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline or call 1-866-331-9474 or text “loveis” to 22522 for the National Dating Abuse Helpline.
If you or someone you know needs help, call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org for mental health support. Additionally, you can find local mental health and crisis resources at dontcallthepolice.com. Outside of the U.S., please visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention.
