Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence files Amicus Brief Asking U.S. Supreme Court to Prohibit Convicted Domestic Violence Abusers to Possess Guns

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence filed a "friend of the Court" brief with the United States Supreme Court on June 16, 2008 urging the Court to reverse an appeals court ruling allowing convicted domestic violence abusers to possess guns.

The Supreme Court will consider this case in this term which began the first week of October of this year.  The case will likely be the first case the Court will hear following its Second Amendment decision in District of Columbia v. Heller.  If upheld, the lower court ruling could require the names of thousands of dangerous, convicted abusers to be purged from the Brady background check system.

The Brady Center's Brief was joined by ten national law enforcement organizations.  The brief provides the Court with studies highlighting the extreme danger posed by domestic violence abusers armed with firearms.  On average, more than three people are killed by intimate partners every day in this country, and the number of homicides by intimates with handguns has increased.  When firearms are involved in domestic incidents, the abuse is twelves times more likely to result in death.  The mere presence of a firearm in the house of an abuser makes an abused woman at least six times more likely to be killed that other abused women.  In addition, statistics show that the safety of law enforcement is also jeoparized and that 81% of law enforcement officers were killed while responding to domestic disturbance calls between 1996 and 2005.