By Adam Cornell / For the Herald
As October draws to a close it’s designation as Domestic Violence Awareness Month offers the opportunity to draw attention to the public health crisis of domestic violence, experienced by over 12 million adults in the United States each year.
As a prosecutor, I saw all too frequently the physical and psychological harms caused by domestic violence. And how domestic violence can quickly escalate to dangerous, even lethal, levels, particularly when an abusive partner has access to firearms.
The 2016 Mukilteo mass shooting serves as one of many tragic instances in Snohomish County of the destruction caused by domestic violence. It was, in essence, triggered by an enraged young man’s desperate, last-ditch, supremely violent pursuit of control over the body of his former romantic partner, Anna Bui. Unable to manage his rage and jealousy, the gunman turned to weaponry. To terror. To murder. Three young lives, including Bui’s, were lost.
I was called to respond to the crime scene that night. There, I saw the devastation wrought by the gunman and his semi-automatic rifle. Later, as I prosecuted the gunman, I witnessed the reverberations of the ruin.
Firearms in the hands of domestic violence abusers are a deadly combination; not only for survivors and their families, but also for law enforcement who respond to domestic violence calls, and to the community.
Research shows that an abuser’s access to firearms is one of the most significant risk factors for the escalation of domestic violence. And the risk of an abused woman being killed by a male partner increases five-fold when the partner has access to a firearm. Every year, more than 600 American women are shot to death by intimate partners; that translates to a woman being killed by a domestic-violence abuser using a gun approximately every 14 hours.
Non-fatal domestic violence often involves firearms as well. Approximately 4.5 million U.S. women have had intimate partners threaten them with firearms.
The best available research shows that the most important element in preventing fatalities and other harm is to remove the firearm from the situation.
One tool that survivors of domestic violence have to help reduce the risk of harm is to obtain a Domestic Violence Protection Order. A protection order is obtained through a civil court hearing and if granted, can prohibit the person who will be subject to the order from purchasing or having access to firearms, and require them to turn in to law enforcement any firearms they have. This approach protects domestic violence survivors, their children, and others from the ongoing risk of violence, especially during periods of heightened risk.
Despite cases reflecting the importance of laws regarding protection order firearm prohibition in cases across our state and across the country, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear — just days from now — a case challenging the federal law enacted as part of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act that prohibits possession of firearms by individuals against whom qualifying protection orders that have been issued by courts.
This case, United States v. Rahimi, has the potential to overturn decades of law if the court agrees with the argument being made by those challenging the law that abusers have a Second Amendment right to keep their firearms because these kinds of laws were not in use in the 1700s when the Constitution was written. To those who make this argument, the connection between abusers’ access to firearms and lethality risk to families does not matter. Nor does the connection of domestic violence and mass shootings, the fact that if an intimate partner homicide is committed with a firearm, the offender is twice as likely to kill multiple victims — as we saw first-hand in Mukilteo in 2016.
The tragedy in Mukilteo remains seared in the memories of the surviving victims, the families and loved ones of those lost and injured, the first responders who were there, and the Mukilteo community. We honor the life and memory of Anna Bui, Jacob Long, and Jordan Ebner, whose young lives were lost.
Since that tragic day in Mukilteo, legislators, domestic violence advocates, and others have advanced laws and policies that better protect and empower survivors of intimate partner violence and their children.
More work remains to disarm abusers. State laws strengthened to better disarm abusers must be consistently utilized by judges across the state and compliance prioritized by prosecutors and law enforcement agencies. I hope that our Snohomish County judges and beyond will be steadfast in issuing domestic violence protection and ordering the surrender of weapons, and that courts, prosecutors, and law enforcement will be vigorous in ensuring that these court orders are swiftly and fully complied with.
And I hope that the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes the case before them is not about what was happening in the 1700s. It is about keeping survivors, their families, and our communities safe from harm today.
Adam Cornell served as Snohomish County prosecuting attorney from 2019 to 2022 and as a deputy prosecuting attorney from 2002 through 2018. He prosecuted the gunman in the 2016 Mukilteo mass shooting.
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