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Intimate partner homicides account for nearly half the women killed every year, according to federal statistics. More than half of these women are killed with a firearm. And a significant percentage were likely to have obtained protection orders against their eventual killers. (A 2001 study, published in Criminal Justice Review, of women slain by intimate partners in 10 cities put that number at one in five.)
It was in recognition of these converging realities that Congress included a provision in the 1994 crime bill, over the objections of the N.R.A., that barred most people subject to full protective orders filed by intimate partners from purchasing or possessing firearms. In a nod to the concerns of the gun lobby, the statute excluded most people under temporary orders, on the ground that they had not yet had the opportunity to contest the accusations in court.
The statute, though, is rarely enforced. In 2012, prosecutors nationwide filed fewer than 50 such cases, according to a Times analysis of records from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research center at Syracuse University that collects federal government data.
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