H.R.1585 uses the Serious Issue of Domestic Violence as Smokescreen for Banning Guns

Opinion

Washington, DC – -(AmmoLand.com)- The NRA opposes domestic violence and all violent crime, and spends millions of dollars teaching countless Americans how not to be a victim and how to safely use firearms for self-defense. It is a shame that some in the gun control community treat the severity of domestic violence so trivially that they are willing to use it as a tool to advance a political agenda.

H.R.1585 – Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019

H.R. 1585 seeks to expand the list of misdemeanor crime convictions that result in permanent firearm prohibitions. Permanently losing a fundamental civil right for a misdemeanor conviction is virtually unheard of outside the Second Amendment context, so this bill is a clear attempt to treat the Second Amendment as a second-class right. H.R. 1585 uses the legitimate and serious issue of domestic violence as a smokescreen for its real goal — banning firearms ownership.

The NRA never commented on this Act before because it never included gun control.

The Violence Against Women Act could simply have been reauthorized as is, but Speaker Pelosi added gun control to the legislation.

• Under the Gun Control Act (GCA), anyone who is convicted in any court for crime punishable by imprisonment for a year or more (typically a felony) is already prohibited from possessing firearms.
• Nevertheless, in the mid-1990’s, the GCA’s firearm prohibitions were expanded to include persons convicted of a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.” The two main justifications for the expansion were: (1) at that time, courts and legislators took a dismissive attitude toward domestic violence; and (2) domestic crimes that should have been felonies were often reduced to misdemeanors because abused spouses and children were reluctant to cooperate with prosecutors due to financial and emotional dependence on the abuser or a shared responsibility for raising children. This is no longer the case.
• Currently, there are no domestic violence or stalking “loopholes”. The legal and criminal justice systems have the necessary tools to prohibit dangerous individuals from possessing firearms. Domestic violence crimes can and should be taken seriously under the law.
• H.R. 1585 looks to increase the scope of misdemeanor firearm prohibitions by broadly expanding the definition of “domestic relationship”. This would even include “former dating partners,” a subjective term that could easily be abused.
• In addition, the bill creates an entirely new lifetime prohibition for persons convicted of misdemeanor “stalking” offenses. Many of these “stalking” offenses do not include violent or threatening behavior, or involve any personal contact whatsoever. A misdemeanor conviction from a tweet that causes “emotional distress” to a person, for example, could be grounds for a lifetime firearm prohibition.
• The bill would also prohibit firearm possession for those under ex parte restraining orders, which represents a clear denial of constitutional due process protections.

Finally, the prohibitions in H.R. 1585 would apply retroactively to convictions that occurred before the legislation was passed. This could result in untold numbers of citizens being denied their Second Amendment rights because of actions that occurred years or even decades in the past.

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