PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia City Council's Special Committee on Gun Violence Prevention held a hearing Friday on a resolution examining the correlation between domestic violence and gun violence in the city.
Domestic violence helped fuel the alarming rise of gun deaths among women in Philadelphia in 2021. Between 2017 and 2021, domestic assaults with guns increased 106%. Out of the 562 homicides last year, 42 of them were domestic-related, meaning among family or people who live together regardless of familial relation.
"Domestic violence is harmful as it is. When you introduce a firearm into a situation where an abuser is hurting someone it can become lethal pretty quickly," said Ruth Glenn, president and CEO of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
Spencer Cantrell, director of federal affairs for the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, said there are some concrete changes that can be made to ensure that abusers don't have access to lethal means, and to protect survivors.
“One recommendation is provide a worksheet to survivors with pictures of firearms, so that that it’s easy for them to identify what firearms the defendants may possess," she suggested.
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Cantrell said this has been used in other jurisdictions and it helps with the retrieval process. However, she acknowledged that some in the community may be hesitant to report abuse to police, and that trust needs to be built so that survivors of all cultural backgrounds can engage with trauma-informed systems.
"It’s critical to ensure that victim services are accessible by everyone including Black, indigenous people of color, as well as LGBTQ, religious minorities, immigrants and individuals with disabilities," she said.
"We have got to do better at ensuring that survivors are safe from firearms. That includes enforcement of laws and removal - also making sure that entities have resources to be able to do that," added Glenn.
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According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, 1 in 5 women and 1 in 7 men nationwide report experiencing severe physical violence from an intimate partner, as well as nearly 2 in 5 transgender people. An FBI analysis determined 56% of women murdered by an intimate partner between 2010 and 2019 were killed with firearms.
The Senate just passed the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization, which includes services for survivors who were incarcerated and returning to their communities, and it explores restorative justice as a means to addressing domestic violence. During the pandemic, gun homicides involving intimate partners rose 25% nationally in 2020 compared to the previous year.
The Philadelphia Police Department has been working with Women Against Abuse and have received voluntary training on how to be proactive and identify high risk situations.
Listen to this conversation about Philadelphia's domestic homicide crisis:
