One issue with domestic abuse is that, absent physical evidence, it can boil down to he said/she said. Physical evidence is often covered up by the victim, or the abuser simply refuses to let the victim go anywhere where it can be documented. These are evil people, but they know that what they’re doing isn’t acceptable, so they want it hidden.
Because of that, when a victim finally has had enough, they can find themselves on the receiving end of abuse allegations. Or am I the only one who remembers Amber Heard going on about being the victim, only for actual evidence to surface showing her abusing Johnny Depp?
Admittedly, most abusers are men, and the victims are women, and so this is often viewed as primarily a women’s problem, for what should be understandable reasons.
And in supposedly trying to help them, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger just screwed them over with one of her new gun control bills, one that claims to close the “intimate partner loophole.”
Now, the feds already did this in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, and my beef then was that determining who was a boyfriend or girlfriend is kind of hard to do in this day and age.
But Virginia Democrats broadened the definition to mean “an individual who, within the previous 12 months, was in a romantic, dating, or sexual relationship with the person as determined by the length, nature, frequency, and type of interaction between the individuals involved in the relationship.”
It looks like it covers a lot without covering too much, except that “dating” isn’t defined, nor is just how long, what nature, and what type of interactions constitute a relationship. Is a “friends with benefits” deal an intimate partner relationship? What about a couple of friends who just occasionally hook up?
The vagueness, though, coupled with a lot of other factors, can turn this one bill supposedly intended to protect domestic violence survivors into one that will screw them over.
Sheena Parker, a firearms instructor who co-owns Trouble Defense in Fairfax County, said many women who come to her to learn about gun safety and marksmanship are survivors of abuse.
“We have quite a bit of ladies … who have gone through some domestic abuse issues, and they have decided that they do want to be a firearm owner,” Parker said.
For some survivors, access to a firearm is tied to their ability to protect themselves from an abuser.
In one Virginia case last year, a woman in Chesterfield County shot her boyfriend after he allegedly assaulted and strangled her, with police determining the shooting was self-defense.
Parker’s training sessions often focus not just on how to use a firearm but also on when it is legally justified, an issue she said is especially important for survivors navigating complex personal and legal circumstances.
But critics say the new law could complicate that path. Because domestic violence cases are not always clear-cut, they warn that survivors themselves could face charges, as they could potentially trigger the new law under the expanded definition of an intimate partner.
It’s not unusual for abusive partners to claim they’re actually the ones who have been abused. While the courts can often sort that out–or they just assume the male partner is the abusive one, because that happens, too–it takes time.
Frankly, for women who have survived domestic abuse, being legally disarmed, even in the short term, could have fatal ramifications. Note the story about the woman in Chesterfield County. Had she been unarmed, she’d be listed as a domestic violence fatality. Instead, she’s an armed citizen story that illustrates just why guns are important for women.
While there are outliers in everything, the average man is much stronger and faster than the average woman. That means he can not only kill her with his bare hands if he wants, but she can’t even guarantee she could outrun him if she had the chance.
Guns are equalizers. They make women the match of men, at least, and considering how many women I’ve seen outshoot the men in their lives, they might do better than that in many cases.
And Spanberger just made things harder for these women, all because of her and her party’s hoplophobia.
Maybe they should spend more time looking to disarm their fellow Democrats instead of disarming everyone else.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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