By now, we have all heard the story. Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher shot and killed the mother of his child, Kasandra Perkins, on Saturday, before turning the gun on himself in front of his coaches at Arrowhead Stadium. Tragically, stories like that of Kasandra Perkins and Jovan Belcher happen every day in America — three women on average are murdered daily by a current or former intimate partner.

NBC sports commentator Bob Costas was right in his assessment of the deadliness of guns in domestic disputes, as he mourned the loss of Belcher and Perkins during the Kansas City Chiefs game on Sunday. He quoted an article written by reporter Jason Whitlock:

Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions, and their possible connection to football will be analyzed….But here is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.

A backlash from Rush Limbaugh and other pundits ensued. Limbaugh espoused that the gun was not the reason Belcher killed his girlfriend, that he could have strangled her instead. A Fox news anchor argued we shouldn’t be concerned about firearms because Belcher could have used a butcher knife. These commentators threw up their hands, saying that there’s nothing we can do to prevent batterers from killing.

Thankfully, those who work with domestic violence victims do not accept this false conclusion. Part of the job of a police officer, social worker, attorney, or judge who must intervene in a domestic violence situation is to assess which pattern of violence is most likely to turn from repeated assaults to homicide. Numerous tools have been developed to help assess the particular risk of lethality in each situation. Domestic violence death review teams meticulously pore over details of dead victims’ relationships with their batterers to determine what factors they have in common. It is no surprise that a batterer’s access to firearms has been found to be one of the greatest predictors that an abusive relationship will turn fatal.

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California has a history of enacting some of the strongest gun laws in the nation. This year, Governor Brown signed two new measures to improve upon the state’s laws by helping to protect Californians from gun violence in public and in their homes. On September 28^th, the governor signed AB 1527. The new law prohibits the open carrying of unloaded rifles and shotguns in public.  After a similar measure banning the open carrying of unloaded handguns was enacted last year, members of the so-called “open carry movement” responded by openly carrying rifles and shotguns at shopping malls, beach areas and other crowded public places.  This activity greatly alarmed the public and law enforcement statewide, resulting in the new measure.  The open carrying of all firearms is now prohibited in public places in California. The Law Center supported both the handgun and long gun open carry bans.

One day later, Governor Brown signed SB 1433, which will help disarm domestic abusers.  This law will require certain courts that issue protective orders to cross-reference state firearm records to determine whether a domestic abuser owns a firearm. If records indicate that a batterer is also a gun owner, law enforcement must request that the firearms be relinquished when serving the protective order. The Law Center supported this measure. Abused women are five times more likely to be killed by their abusers if an abuser owns a firearm. Strong procedures to facilitate the relinquishment of firearms by domestic abusers are absolutely critical.

Want to see more success stories? You can find them here.

The Law Center’s latest brochure, The Second Amendment Battleground: Victories in the Courts and Why They Matter, examines trends in Second Amendment litigation since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark District of Columbia v. Heller decision in 2008. Although the Heller Court held that the Second Amendment protects a responsible, law-abiding citizen’s right to possess an operable handgun in the home for self-defense, the vast majority of courts that have heard Second Amendment challenges since that case have rejected them, upholding a wide variety of gun laws as constitutional.

As the publication describes, smart gun laws aren’t just constitutional. They’re also critical to preventing gun violence in our communities.

Heller and the Explosion of Second Amendment Litigation

Four years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court singlehandedly inserted the judicial system into the ongoing national debate over gun laws in America. In a 5-4 decision in 2008’s District of Columbia v. Heller,¹ the Court invalidated the District of Columbia’s handgun ban and firearm storage law, stating for the first time that the Second Amendment protects a responsible, law-abiding citizen’s right to possess an operable handgun in the home for self-defense.

Heller was unquestionably a radical decision, overturning the Court’s previous ruling that the Second Amendment was tied to state militia service.² For almost seventy years, lower federal and state courts nationwide had relied on that pronouncement to reject hundreds of Second Amendment challenges.

The Heller decision immediately drew strong criticism from a wide array of legal scholars, historians, advocates, and legislators, including a particularly scathing rebuke from respected conservative judge Richard Posner, who noted that, “The only certain effect of the Heller decision…will be to increase litigation over gun ownership.”³

In fact, new litigation started almost immediately. The day that Heller was announced, plaintiffs filed a lawsuit challenging the City of Chicago’s handgun ban, with a second suit filed the next day. Other suits emerged soon after, escalating once the Supreme Court confirmed that the Second Amendment also applied to state and local laws in 2010’s McDonald v. City of Chicago decision.⁴ After that case, the number of lawsuits challenging gun laws nationwide skyrocketed.

Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner criticized Justice Scalia’s majority opinion in Heller⁵

Thankfully, despite the explosion of litigation, courts across the country have rejected the overwhelming majority of Second Amendment challenges initiated since Heller. As discussed here, gun rights advocates and criminal defendants across the country have sought to expand the Second Amendment to invalidate almost every gun law on the books today. In siding with us and the majority of Americans who support sensible gun laws, courts are finding that smart laws aren’t just constitutional – they’re also critical to keeping our communities safe from gun violence.

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1. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). [↩]
2. United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939). [↩]
3. Richard A. Posner, In Defense of Looseness, The New Republic, Aug. 27, 2008. [↩]
4. McDonald v. City of Chicago, 130 S. Ct. 3020 (U.S. 2010). [↩]
5. Posner, supra note 3. [↩]