Some laws aim to protect domestic violence survivors by prohibiting their alleged abusers from possessing firearms. But Alice Ellyson, an assistant professor at the University of Washington, said that doesn’t always happen.
“If you don't have someone following up on this, you're basically relying on an honor system,” she said.
Ellyson led a study recently published in the Journal of Criminal Justice. She found that after a unit in King County was created to enforce those firearm rules, there was a drop in overall crimes committed by alleged abusers, such as instances of stalking and stolen or destroyed property. Essentially, the unit’s work reduced crime by about 27 percentage points, the researchers found.
“Even when crimes were committed, the severity of those crimes was lower,” Ellyson said. “This makes a lot of sense, because any time a firearm is involved in a crime that escalates the severity of the crime.”
To measure the enforcement unit’s impact, Ellyson’s team reviewed data from before and after the unit began in 2018. They analyzed over 6,000 domestic violence protection orders in King County, along with arrest data from Washington State Patrol.
Enforcement of such firearm rules varies across Washington counties.
Dave Adams, a sergeant with the Spokane Police Department domestic violence unit, said he wasn't surprised that the UW study showed a reduction in crime: “Once you put the lens on the problem and you devote resources to it, the problems tend to go down.”
Adams said back in 2019, some officers initially resisted orders to take away guns from accused abusers.
“When the law hit, there was a lot of pushback,” he said. “A lot of ‘I know my Second Amendment rights’ and ‘why are we doing this?’ and ‘we can't do that.’”
But, he said, attitudes have changed. His team has had an enforcement program similar to King County’s for over a year.
And in his experience, most people surrender their firearms when ordered to do so.
Ellyson, the UW professor, said her study’s findings show the efficacy of “light touch” interventions, such as education for survivors, led by the King County enforcement unit.
“It's essentially an outside-of-the-criminal-system intervention that can help reduce crime,” Ellyson said. “I think it is important to know that they might have this added benefit of overall harm reduction, because we're constantly trying to find ways to reduce crime in our communities.”
Next, she wants to look beyond general crime reduction to study crimes affecting families who filed protection orders.
