Elsevier

Preventive Medicine

Volume 118, January 2019, Pages 216-219
Preventive Medicine

Short Communication
Firearm legislation and firearm use in female intimate partner homicide using National Violent Death Reporting System data

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2018.11.007Get rights and content

Highlights

  • In US intimate partner homicides, the firearm to non firearm ratio is higher with female victims than with male victims.

  • Stricter firearm laws are associated with lower ratios of firearm to non-firearm use.

  • Lax targeted firearm legislation is associated with higher femicide rates.

Abstract

Firearms account for over half of female intimate partner homicides (IPH) in the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS). Although firearm-related IPH is directly associated with state-level firearm prevalence and inversely associated with specific firearm legislation targeting intimate partner violence perpetrators, these associations may be due to the underlying nature of the perpetrator population rather than the legislation or policy. We explored the impact of firearm legislation on weapon use in IPH in a cross-sectional analysis using NVDRS data via the WISQARS online interactional system, through examination of firearm (F) and non-firearm (NF) age-adjusted mortality rates and firearm: non-firearm (F:NF) rate ratios across victim gender and in states with varying levels of firearm restrictions. Overall, for 2015 (27 states aggregated), the impact of gender was substantial: the F:NF ratio for male victims was 0.92, indicating a small lead for NF mechanisms, but for female victims, it was 1.5, with greater firearm use apparent. When looking only at female IPH, jurisdictions with high firearm restrictions show a pronounced trend for a F:NF ratio <1.0 whereas states with few of these restrictions demonstrate ratios >1.0. Numerous limitations apply, including: the cross sectional nature of the data, varying years for available state data; and lack of control for multiple demographic variables. Despite its limitations, this analysis extends prior research by comparing rates of NF use across jurisdictions, and suggests that availability of firearms by itself plays an important role in driving IPH rates higher in areas with fewer firearm restrictions.

Introduction

Women are victims in the vast majority (85%) of the nearly 1800 intimate partner homicides (IPH) committed annually in the US, and approximately one-half of all IPH are firearm-related (Fowler et al., 2018; Díez et al., 2017; Violence Policy Center 2015). In the most recent National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) report of 18 states, intimate partner violence (IPV) was a precipitating factor in 48% of homicides among females but only 9% of males (Fowler et al., 2018). Firearms play a pronounced role in IPH, used in over half of all instances—by far the most frequently used weapon in this type of violent death, as with overall violent deaths (Fowler et al., 2018).

A substantial literature supports the conclusion that stronger laws regulating firearms are associated with lower firearm homicides overall. Among the specific provisions, background checks for gun purchasers and laws requiring a permit to purchase a firearm have shown a consistent association with lower firearm homicide rates (Lee et al., 2017). Further, a large state-level analysis found universal background checks (UBC) to be associated with a 60% reduction in firearm mortality, one of 3 types of legislation demonstrating the strongest associations with overall firearm mortality (Kalesan et al., 2016). In contrast to the literature on overall mortality, available studies on the association between firearm legislation and IPH are fewer in number, and have been hampered by limited power (Díez et al., 2017) and non-longitudinal designs (Zeoli et al., 2016). Rates of firearm-related IPH have been shown to be greatest in states where firearm prevalence is highest (Díez et al., 2017; Kalesan et al., 2016; Bangalore and Messerli, 2013). Recent work on the impact of legislation has focused on those provisions specific to the situation of IPH. A systematic review conducted by Zeoli et al. (2016) suggested that legislation that limited access to firearms among IPV perpetrators reduced the lethal risk in IPV; and recent work by Díez et al. (2017) estimated a lower risk of IPH in jurisdictions where certain IPV specific firearm legislation had been adopted. Nevertheless, due to the observational and often cross-sectional nature of many analyses, the uncovered associations may be due to the underlying nature of the perpetrator population—i.e., the violent nature of the intimate partner—rather than a result of either firearm prevalence or firearm legislation or policy (Zeoli et al., 2016). One way of investigating this problem of population “selection” is to compare homicides associated with other, non-firearm weapons in IPH across different states or jurisdictions that vary in their restrictions on firearm access. It is logical that with an increased tendency toward lethal violent behavior, one would observe higher rates of both non-firearm-related as well as firearm-related IPH across jurisdictions, independent of firearm restriction status.

Our analyses were conducted to investigate two main hypotheses regarding F:NF IPH rate ratios. First, we hypothesized that these rate ratios overall would be higher among female victims as compared with male victim homicides, because firearm use demonstrates a strong association with gender (Hemenway and Solnick, 2015; Geier et al., 2017). We further hypothesized that the ratios would be higher in jurisdictions with lower levels of firearm restrictions, which would enable intimate partner access to firearms. We based this latter hypothesis on available data demonstrating the predominance of firearm involvement in IPH (Violence Policy Center, 2015) and the inference that firearms are the weapon of choice to commit IPH where they are accessible.

Section snippets

Methods

We explored the impact of firearm legislation on weapon use in intimate partner homicide (IPH) using NVDRS data via the Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS), an online interactional system providing NVDRS data on injury and violent death (https://wisqars.cdc.gov:8443/nvdrs/nvdrsDisplay.jsp), through examination of firearm (F) and non-firearm (NF) age-adjusted mortality rates and F:NF rate ratios across victim gender and in states with varying levels of firearm

Results

Overall, for 2015 (27 states aggregated), the impact of victim gender was substantial: the F:NF ratio for male victims was 0.92, indicating a small lead for NF mechanisms, but for female victims, it was 1.5, with greater firearm use apparent and providing an additional perspective on how firearm availability drives female IPH (data not shown).

Fig. 2 demonstrates the range and variability of firearm- and non-firearm-involved female IPH rates, and F:NF ratios across analyzed states. Nine states

Discussion

Our analysis demonstrated an association of F:NF rate ratios with jurisdiction level of restrictive firearm provisions: these ratios exceeded 1.0 in jurisdictions with lower firearm provisions, and were all below 1.0 in jurisdictions with stronger provisions. The gender comparison of F:NF ratio over all NVDRS states demonstrates the special significance and targeted potential impact of firearm legislation on reduced female mortality from IPV. The disparate gender-specific ratios may be

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The authors report no conflict of interest.

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