Dear VPC Supporter,
For women, gun violence is closely linked with domestic violence. Just look at the numbers: Ninety-four percent of women murdered by men were killed by someone they knew. At least 61 percent of the women who knew their killers were their intimate partners. And the most common weapon that men used to murder women was a gun . . .
These are some of the findings in our annual report, When Men Murder Women, released for Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October. We looked at the FBI statistics for 2011 — the most recent year for which comprehensive data is available — and found that 1,707 females were murdered by males in single victim/single offender incidents. At the state level, South Carolina had the highest per capita rate of women murdered by men. Some of the other states that ranked in the top 10 were Oklahoma, Arizona, Tennessee, and Louisiana.
Read and share our report on When Men Murder Women and help end our national epidemic of gun violence and domestic violence.
The NRA and its financial patrons in the gun industry aggressively encourage women to buy guns in order to protect themselves from strangers. But as our report shows, the reality is that women are nearly always killed by someone they know — and often by someone they love. Before any woman decides to buy a gun, she should consider the fact that owning a firearm actually increases one’s risk of lethal harm.
This past month, advocacy groups and public officials have used our report to aid their efforts to stop violence against women. Now, it’s time to push for new laws that will help keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers.
Thank you, as always, for your support as we work together to reduce gun death and injury.
Sincerely,
Josh Sugarmann
Executive Director
The Violence Policy Center is a leading resource for new information measuring the devastating effects of gun violence in our nation, from state-by-state studies on gun death and injury to groundbreaking research on America’s gun industry and gun lobby. At the same time, the VPC works in support of effective gun violence prevention policies on the local, state, and federal levels that save lives and help protect communities.