A new analysis from University of California San Diego researchers is drawing a direct line between guns in the home and turmoil in intimate relationships. The study finds a strong association between firearm ownership and both experiencing and perpetrating intimate partner violence, and that pattern shows up in two very different gun-law environments: California and Louisiana. Adults who reported partner violence in the past year were more likely to currently own a gun and to have recently bought one. The authors say that points to a clear prevention opportunity, even though the data do not prove that gun purchases cause the violence.
Study and publication
The peer-reviewed paper appeared last Tuesday in BMC Public Health and draws on cross-sectional statewide surveys conducted in 2023. The research team used data from the 2023 Violence Experiences surveys and included 3,560 adults in California and 1,081 adults in Louisiana, adjusting for demographics, mental-health symptoms and other covariates.
Jakana Thomas, a UC San Diego political-science professor and co-author of the report, said in a university release Wednesday that "Our findings suggest that both experiencing and perpetrating intimate partner violence are strongly associated with increased rates of firearm ownership and recent firearm purchase." The release also names co-authors Nicole E. Johns, Annika Li, Gennifer Kully and Anita Raj, according to UC San Diego.
Key findings
According to the paper, people who reported being victimized by a partner in the past year had about three times higher odds of currently owning a firearm than those who did not report such victimization. Those who reported perpetrating partner violence had nearly 10 times higher odds of firearm ownership. The study also found that victims had roughly three times the odds of purchasing a firearm in the past year, while perpetrators had about five times the odds of a recent purchase. The authors report that these associations appeared in both California and Louisiana, according to BMC Public Health.
The researchers stress that a cross-sectional design cannot settle the question of what causes what. Still, they argue that the strong links between guns and both victimization and perpetration create a window for prevention. They also urge policymakers to reconsider narratives that present gun ownership as protective in violent relationships, as reported by the Times of San Diego.
Why it matters
National surveillance and earlier research have repeatedly found that when a gun is present, intimate partner violence is far more likely to turn deadly. Analyses of violent-death reporting show that more than 60% of intimate partner homicides involve a firearm, and victims face sharply higher odds of being killed when an abuser has access to guns, according to the CDC. That heightened lethality is a central reason the UCSD team calls for closer coordination of violence prevention, mental-health services and firearm policy.
Local implications
Because UC San Diego scholars led the work, the findings land close to home. In the San Diego region, service providers and law enforcement already build safety planning, shelter options and legal help into responses for survivors, and county partners operate a Family Justice Center and a 24-hour domestic-violence hotline at 888-385-4657, according to the City of San Diego. People in immediate danger are urged to call 9-1-1 or contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline for confidential support.
The UCSD authors point to state-level tools such as gun-violence restraining orders and routine screening at health and social-service touchpoints as practical pieces of a prevention strategy. Research on California's gun-violence restraining orders indicates that these orders can temporarily remove firearms from people judged to pose a risk, although the authors emphasize that prevention efforts need to be coordinated and guided by evidence, per JAMA Network Open.
