Prepared Statement of Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Ranking Member, Senate Judiciary Committee
Hearing on VAWA Next Steps: Protecting Women from Gun Violence
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Mr. Chairman, we discuss today an important subject. All of us want to see the federal government take appropriate action to assist in fighting domestic violence, and especially domestic homicides.
I have met with many victims of domestic violence over the years. I feel compassion for the physical, mental and emotional injuries they have suffered. They have told me of the fear that they confront. And I want to take effective action against perpetrators of violence against women.
Today, I am one of the lead Republicans in a group of bipartisan senators who have come together on a bill to address sexual assault on our nation’s college campuses.
To me, all domestic homicides are tragedies. It does not matter how the victim died. Forty-five percent of domestic homicides now do not involve guns, a figure considerably higher than in the 1980’s.
In 1996, I voted for the Lautenberg Amendment. Those convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors were prohibited from owning firearms. So were those against whom permanent restraining orders were entered because of domestic violence.
For these prohibitions to be effective, records of the convictions and restraining orders must be entered into the national instant background check system.
So it distresses me that even now, all these years later, according to the Center for American Progress, “only 36 states have submitted any domestic violence misdemeanor convictions to the NICS Index, and of these, 21 states have submitted 20 or fewer of these records. … An even smaller number of states have submitted records regarding restraining orders: 19 states have submitted domestic violence restraining order records to the NICS Index, and of these, 9 states have submitted 10 or fewer.”
Mr. Chairman, I note that Rhode Island has submitted exactly zero misdemeanor domestic violence records to NICS and exactly zero domestic violence restraining order records. The corresponding numbers for Delaware are zero and zero; Hawaii, three and zero; Illinois, one and zero; Minnesota, sixteen and two; New York, zero and ten; Vermont, two and zero.
These states are failing to do their jobs.
Iowa ranks near the top among the states in this regard, but we still need to do better.
Seventy-nine percent of the records submitted come from three small states. As the report notes, “If all states submitted records of misdemeanor domestic violence convictions at the average rate of these three states, we can project there would be 2.9 million records in the NICS Index in this category, more than 40 times the number currently submitted.”
This means that large numbers of prohibited persons under the law today can purchase a firearm through legal channels because the instant background check system fails to identify them as such. Our NICS system is full of holes with respect to current gun prohibitions, greatly reducing the effectiveness of background checks.
Last year, Senator Cruz and I offered an amendment to legislation before the Senate that would have helped fix the NICS system. Our amendment would have improved state compliance with NICS reporting for mental health records for prohibited persons.
It received the most bipartisan support of any similar legislation, but failed to get the needed 60 votes. We should do the same with respect to persons who have been convicted of domestic violence crimes and subject to permanent restraining orders. We should be able to gain a bipartisan effort to enact legislation of this type.
But that is not the majority’s approach.
There are two bills before the committee on domestic gun violence.
One of them, from Senator Klobuchar, expands the definition of prohibited persons to include dating violence, beyond the cohabitating relationships in current law, as well as to add convicted stalkers to the list of prohibited persons.
Another, by Senator Blumenthal, also expands the relationships, and would make those subject to temporary restraining orders, entered without notice to the alleged abuser, prohibited persons.
A significant problem exists with the completeness of background checks under current law. It is hard to believe that expanding the universe of prohibited persons whose records will not show up when a background check is performed will reduce gun homicides.
I fear that false hopes are again being raised. In many states, few persons are convicted of misdemeanor stalking. In Maryland, for instance, zero were convicted of that crime last year, one in Arkansas, and five in New Mexico. Making these offenders prohibited persons will not accomplish very much, even if their records made it into NICS, a questionable assumption.
These bills would expand retroactively the definition of a prohibited person. But they will also make actual individuals who were allowed to own guns criminals retroactively, not by virtue of their crime, but from passing the bill.
Who is going to spend the time and personnel to go over every domestic violence conviction record and examine the relationship between the parties to determine whether they fit the definition of these bills? Who is going to actually input those records into NICS?
Suppose someone determines erroneously that a prior conviction was for conduct against a dating partner. What recourse will the individual have to demonstrate that he is not a prohibited person? How will guns actually be taken from prohibited persons? How soon would an officer be diverted from another law enforcement activity to remove these guns?
The restraining order provisions could pose even greater problems. In a large percentage of cases, temporary restraining orders issued without notice to the defendant do not lead to permanent orders. Yet, the constitutional rights of the accused would be taken away without due process. That person will not know that he or she is a prohibited person if, during the brief period the order is in effect, law enforcement should show up to take away the gun.
We should also be very skeptical that a temporary order will be entered into NICS in time to stop someone from passing a background check. Making existing NICS records more complete is far more likely to make a difference in domestic violence homicides, especially gun homicides, than the bills the Committee is considering.
I understand that domestic violence advocates asked the majority to hold a hearing on domestic violence homicides many months ago but were repeatedly put off. The Klobuchar bill was introduced more than one year ago. But only as we are about to head out of town, with very few legislative days remaining, did the majority grant the advocates their request for a hearing. Only as the number of days until the election grew short did the committee schedule this hearing.
The committee has not held a markup for bills for two weeks now. Had the majority been serious about reducing domestic homicide, we had the time to work together to come up with a bipartisan solution. There was a real opportunity in this Congress for a bipartisan effort to combat intimate homicides of all kinds. That opportunity was squandered.
The bills before the committee today could exacerbate the problem of keeping currently prohibited persons from owning firearms. I hope that going forward, we will work together to find bipartisan, well thought out, practical ways to protect women and men from violence of all kinds.
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