Gun Gendercide Continues

While the nation tries to digest the crime of two media members killed on camera in Virginia by a legal gun owner, a spate of women killed by enraged armed husbands has received less notice.

Hours after receiving a year of unsupervised probation for violating an order of protection against domestic violence filed by his wife, James Terry Colley, Jr. shot and killed his wife Amanda Cloaninger and her friend Lindy Dobbins in St. Augustine, Florida last Thursday, say police. Until Colley was apprehended, three nearby schools were locked down including one where the couple’s child attends.

Two days later, Blessing Okereke was fatally shot in the Bank of America tower in Oak Cliff in Dallas by her husband say police. Husband David Thompson told police he believed his wife was reaching for his pistol, so he shot her in self-defense. Right.

The following day, Nuria N. Kudlach was fatally shot at her home in State College, PA and her husband was charged with first- and third-degree murder the following day. And yesterday Sonja Wells Raine was fatally shot on her job in Pascagoula, MS by her enraged husband according to police. Raine’s “sister got killed the same way by her boyfriend or husband, so that is shocking,” said co-worker Kim Pinkney.

Amazingly, more women were shot by enraged husbands last week. Also shot were Francisca Jew at a donut shop in Devine, Texas and an unidentified Arlington, Washington woman. The Devine and Arlington women are expected to survive.

Half the murders of women in the US each year are by intimate partners and homicide increases 500 percent when a firearm is present. Yet the overwhelmingly male NRA is okay with the gendercide statistics and actually works for the “gun rights” of suspected domestic abusers, also overwhelmingly men. In Michigan the NRA sought to push through a law allowing people under court issued restraining orders to keep their guns. Like David Thompson, the suspect in the Bank of America tower murder in Dallas, they might have to “defend ” themselves.

When women are gunned down by enraged partners, often in public places where others are injured too, the NRA likes to say if women are really scared they should arm themselves too. The rhetoric is offensive. Should Nadia Ezaldein, fatally shot by an enraged boyfriend in front of horrified shoppers as she worked behind the cosmetics counter at Chicago’s Magnificent Mile Nordstrom’s last Black Friday, have kept a gun under the counter just in case?

“Women should arm themselves” is an NRA fiction to occlude the bloody gun “gendercide” committed by known domestic abusers under orders of protection who the gun lobby says have “rights.” In at least four instances in recent years, women who had armed themselves were killed with their own guns because of the element of fear and surprise and because the men were bigger, angrier and motivated perpetrators.

The NRA also likes to say no laws can stop partner murderers, ignoring every developed country in the world where domestic gun homicide does not happen weekly--or at all. If seven men were shot in the head in one week by wives who were known to be violent and armed, would it say the same thing?

Tell these top corporations, with pre-written tweets, to protect their employees and customers by banning guns in their stores and offices.

More than three fourths of domestic homicide victims are stalked before they are killed. Yet both stalking and domestic abuse are only misdemeanors in Louisiana. Recently the NRA and other pro-gun groups came at Louisiana lawmakers who were considering stronger regulations against domestic violence with both barrels blazing.
 
The bill under consideration would add “dating partner” as a qualifier for domestic abuse battery charges which currently only name household members such as spouses, family members or co-habitants. Ray Rice, the former Baltimore Ravens running back caught on video battering his fiancé in an elevator, would likely not be covered under current Louisiana domestic battery laws said Rep. Helena Moreno, D-New Orleans, the bill’s sponsor. The bill would also enhance penalties for violations of protective orders.
 
But the bill would violate “gun rights” said gun lobbyists descending upon Baton Rouge. “We don’t need to rush to take away people’s rights just because they made a mistake,” Bradley Gulotta, from Guns Across America told lawmakers. “Not everyone who got in an argument–had a push, had a shove–is gong to come back and do more bodily harm or be a danger to other people.” Let’s give the pushers and shovers the benefit of the doubt …and their firearms? Beside, what if the person had only had “one date” whined gun lobbyists–no fair!
 

 
The NRA’s Tara Mitchell agreed that strengthening laws would take away “citizens civil rights.” The proposed 10-year prohibition on gun owning for convicted batterers violates “a constitutional right” and is “just not something we can support” she told lawmakers.
 
NRA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker was not present at the hearings but echoed the pro-domestic batterer rhetoric in an email to the Times-Picayune. The bill “is so overly broad that it could make a felon out of a girlfriend who pulls a cell phone from her boyfriend’s hand against his will.” Or a man who pummels and drags his girlfriend in an elevator?
 
Both Mitchell and Bakers said the answer to domestic violence was enforcing existing laws–which, of course, deem stalking and domestic battery misdemeanors.
 
The gun lobby’ work to restore “gun rights” of convicted felons, suspected batterers under orders of protection and people who have been hospitalized with mental illness is well publicized. Why should violent or disturbed people have guns? Because if you take away their “gun rights” pretty soon we will all be disarmed and living under violent fascist dictatorships like the oppressed peoples in EU countries, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and Australia.
 
“When you begin taking away the rights of people that you don’t like, that’s the slippery slope,” said NRA lobbyist Marion P. Hammer when the Sun Sentinel reported that valid concealed weapon licenses were issued to 1,400 probable felons including a man who shot his girlfriend as she cooked breakfast, a pizza deliveryman wanted for fatally shooting a 15-year-old over a stolen order of chicken wings and six registered sex offenders. People “you don’t like?”
 
Domestic violence allegations have touched the top echelons of the NRA. The wife of the NRA’s own New York City field representative Richard D’Alauro, Maribeth testified on Capitol Hill that she endured years of bullying and abuse from the NRA honcho. D’Alauro possessed 39 guns when charged with assault, harassment and endangering the welfare of a child. Nice.
 
The truth is the gun lobby is okay with US domestic violence deaths–estimated at 1,000 a year, mostly women–to preserve the “gun rights” of its constituency also known as its revenue stream.
 

Join our action to tell corporate America to get off the “sidelines” and take a stand against gun violence including the “can’t miss” sniper rifle sold to civilians. When corporations want sane gun laws, we will have sane gun laws. Follow us at @GunVictimsAct