Nearly 25% Of Perpetrators Of Domestic Violence Murder-Suicides Were Not Legally Allowed To Have A Gun

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