Preventing intimate partner homicide with red flag laws

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0:0:02.0 Welcome to Population Healthy, a podcast from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Join us as we dig into important health topics, stuff that affects the health of all of us at a population level.

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0:01:19.0 Welcome to Population Healthy from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. I'm your host for this episode, Dr. April Zeoli, Associate Professor of Health Management and Policy, and Director of the Michigan Firearm Law Implementation Program in the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention. On this episode, we'll look at how firearm policy, specifically Red Flag Laws and firearm restrictions as part of domestic violence protective orders, can play a crucial role in preventing domestic violence tragedies, particularly intimate partner homicide. I'll explore what we know from research and where policy can make a life-saving difference.

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0:02:08.0 To start, let's consider the connection between domestic violence, firearms, and intimate partner homicide in the United States. When we think about homicide, we mainly think about the killing of men, and that's because they're the majority of homicide victims. However, when women are killed, they are most likely to be killed by someone they know. Generally or typically, it's their intimate partner who kills them. In fact, of intimate partner homicides in the year 2022, 73% of them were the killing of a woman, and 61% of them involved the use of a firearm. This means that the majority of intimate partner homicides involved a female victim who was killed with a firearm.

0:02:58.8 But firearms aren't only used to kill. They are also used to commit non-fatal violence. They're used to coerce, to intimidate, to control. Sometimes a gun is aimed at an intimate partner. Firearms are an incredibly effective weapon of control. Because, I don't know about you, but I'm gonna do whatever the person pointing a gun at me or threatening to shoot me tells me to do so that I don't get shot. I suspect most of us are the same. They are an effective weapon of control, even if they're never shot.

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0:03:41.2 So what exactly are Red Flag Laws, and how do they work in practice when it comes to firearm violence prevention? Well, the first thing you have to know about Red Flag Laws is that they're also called Extreme Risk Protection Orders. So I'm gonna refer to them as Extreme Risk Protection Orders or ERPOs. What they are are civil court orders that allow the court to look at evidence and decide whether someone is at a really high risk of hurting themselves, such as through suicide, or hurting someone else through assault or homicide. If the court finds enough evidence to show that they are a danger to themselves or to other people, then the court can grant this Extreme Risk Protection Order that says that that person temporarily can't have guns: They can't buy them, they can't possess them. So what they do is remove these lethal means, a way that someone could fatally harm themselves or others.

0:04:51.9 Law enforcement can petition. In some states, family members can petition. And in a minority of states, healthcare workers can petition. So what those people would do is take those petitions with evidence to the civil court. And the civil court, the judge, the magistrate, is going to decide whether there's enough evidence to temporarily suspend firearm rights.

0:05:18.0 But how do ERPOs and a companion law—Domestic Violence Protective Orders—specifically impact the risk of intimate partner firearm violence and homicide? Some Domestic Violence Protective Orders also carry firearm restrictions. The difference between ERPOs and Domestic Violence Protective Orders is that ERPOs only suspend firearm rights, while Domestic Violence Protective Orders can have a lot of other things in them, such as issues of custody, of who gets the house temporarily, of whether you can be in proximity of each other. There are many more safeguards in the Domestic Violence Protective Order. Both remove firearms, and the removal of firearms is crucial to reducing the risk of firearm violence.

0:06:11.8 In fact, Domestic Violence Protective Orders with firearm restrictions, those laws are associated with decreases in intimate partner homicide. And the way that generally works is that there's an altercation between the two partners. The abusive partner has access to a gun, maybe it's on their hip, maybe it's on the table, and they grab it and shoot, and then you have an intimate partner homicide. These are the types of situations where firearm removal can really save a life because the gun won't be there.

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0:06:53.1 Of course, there are still challenges and limitations to these laws. So what should we keep in mind about Extreme Risk Protection Orders and Domestic Violence Protective Orders in the context of domestic violence? Well, the first thing we need to keep in mind is that ERPOs and Domestic Violence Protective Orders with firearm restrictions are only going to work if people get them. There are people who are not going to come to the legal system for that protection for various good reasons. Maybe they tried before to use the legal system, but it only made the situation worse; it only made the violence worse. Maybe they went to the legal system before and they weren't believed. Maybe they petitioned for one of these orders, but they weren't granted the order. So the first challenge is just getting the order.

0:07:51.8 The second challenge is implementation of the order. What that means is that the person who is under the order—the abusive partner—has to have their name put in the background check system so that if they try to buy a gun, their name is gonna pop up as disqualified and they won't be able to legally purchase that gun. The second part has to do with the firearms that the abusive partner under the order may already own or possess. Those firearms need to be removed or relinquished to provide safety for the victim-survivor. Law enforcement may go to their residence, knock on the door to serve the order, and ask for the firearms. Or, sometimes the court will allow the person under the order to turn them in to a licensed firearms dealer. They can get the guns after the order is lifted, but during the time of the order, they need to be relinquished or removed, or we're not actually safeguarding the victim-survivor the way we said we would.

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0:09:05.0 In my research, I've seen what can work and what more is needed. Here's what policymakers, advocates, and everyday citizens should know about making Extreme Risk Protection Orders and Domestic Violence Protective Orders with firearm restrictions more effective for intimate partner firearm violence prevention. In my research, I've looked extensively at Domestic Violence Protective Order firearm restrictions, and found that states that have these laws show lower rates of intimate partner homicide than states that don't have these laws, suggesting that they do work to prevent intimate partner homicide. With better implementation, with making sure that we put those names in the background check system and we remove firearms from those abusive partners, we may see intimate partner homicide decrease even more. And so I suggest you agitate in your community for that implementation, for that training for law enforcement and judges.

0:10:10.0 The same goes for Extreme Risk Protection Orders. Now, less than half of states have these, so you have to look and see if your state has them. If your state does have one of these, ensure that law enforcement and judges know what these are and know how to implement them. These are relatively new laws, and so you may find a police department that has never used them and doesn't really know what they are. We do know from a six-state study that I did, where we looked at over 6,600 of these case files, that over 20% of them were used in cases of domestic violence. And in many of these, firearms were aimed at the victim-survivor or threatened to be shot at the victim-survivor, and in a small number of cases, they were actually shot at the victim-survivor. So we really need the legal system to work to implement these laws to keep people safer.

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0:11:15.2 Reducing the loss of life to intimate partner violence and firearm homicides requires bold but thoughtful and evidence-based policy. And all of us have a stake in pushing for solutions that save lives. We learned two policies that could save someone's life: Extreme Risk Protective Orders and Domestic Violence Protection Orders with firearm restrictions. If you or someone you know needs help with a controlling or abusive relationship, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or text the word "BEGIN," B-E-G-I-N, to 88788. If you're worried that you or someone you know may harm themselves or is suicidal, please call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988. To learn more about Extreme Risk Protection Orders, go to firearminjury.umich.edu/erpo-toolkit. All of these resources can be found in the show notes to this episode.

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0:12:40.0 Thanks for listening to this episode of Population Healthy from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Visit our website population-healthy.com for more resources on the topics discussed in this episode and to find more episodes. Population Healthy is produced by Crissy Zamarron with support from Destiny Cook and Anne Reilly. If you enjoyed the show, remember to subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen to podcasts, and consider sharing this episode with friends.

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