A version of this article by Mariel Barnes was published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Ideas Lab as part of the Main Street Agenda.
In April alone, seven people were murdered in domestic violence incidents in Milwaukee. Indeed, these deaths were so unprecedented that they spurred a news conference by Sojourner Family Peace Center aiming to reach people living in abusive situations as well as a coalition-led town hall, which largely focused on domestic violence. Milwaukee is clearly in pain.
The backdrop for this is that last year, End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin released a report indicating that 96 people from across the state were killed in 2022 – a 29 percent increase from the previous year and the highest number since the statewide coalition began tracking domestic violence-related homicides in 2000.
Guns were involved in nearly ninety percent of the homicides reported by End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin. For the seven victims in Milwaukee last month, at least five were killed with a firearm.
Gun violence is one of top concerns in Wisconsin survey
Given this horrific context, it is perhaps unsurprising that gun violence, more generally, is one of the top concerns of Wisconsinites. Nearly 60 percent of participants in our representative, statewide WisconSays/La Follette Survey found that gun violence was either quite a problem or an extremely big problem for the state, while three quarters felt it was a problem nationwide.
Indeed, gun violence was more concerning to our survey respondents than other challenges like healthcare, income inequality, and climate change. It only trailed inflation among the issues we’ve analyzed this year in our Main Street Agenda campaign. Perhaps most importantly in an increasingly polarized world, Wisconsinites were united around this issue with a majority of Democrats (62%), Republicans (60%), and Independents (57%) believing that gun violence is quite a problem or an extremely big problem.
While it is difficult to know exactly what our participants were thinking when they ranked gun violence as an issue of critical concern, it is undeniable that firearms play a huge and disproportionate role in domestic violence homicides. This is true in Milwaukee as demonstrated in the last few weeks, but also across the United States where women are 21 times more likely to die from gun violence when compared to other high-income countries, and a woman is shot and killed by a former or current partner every 16 hours. These figures are even worse for women from historically marginalized communities, particularly Black and Indigenous women, who are almost three times as likely to be killed than non-Hispanic white women.
Universal background checks, red flag laws draw broad support
So, what can we do about this epidemic of gun-related domestic violence? First and foremost, we must get guns out of the hands of abusers. Research has repeatedly shown that removing firearms from perpetrators, particularly those subject to a restraining order, reduces intimate partner homicide by as much as 10 percent. In Wisconsin, judges can order an abuser to surrender their firearms but compliance is mostly based on an “honor system,” which means we must trust that perpetrators are being honest when they declare how many firearms they own.
In addition to removing firearms after abusers have received a restraining order, we can also make it more difficult for abusers to own guns through universal background checks. While current Wisconsin law requires a background check for all gun sales conducted through a licensed gun dealer, private sales, including online sales, are exempt. This creates a large legal loophole, which could be closed by mandating all private sellers must meet their buyers at a licensed gun dealer so as to conduct the background check. The good news is that universal background checks are overwhelmingly popular in Wisconsin with 79 percent of voters supporting the measure.
Finally, we must also support victims of domestic and intimate partner violence far better than we currently do. In 2024, Wisconsin received $13.5 million from the Office of Crime Victim Services to help domestic violence organizations provide support to victims including services such as shelter. This amount represents a 70 percent cut in funding for the state, and while state agencies have tried to provide bridge funding, many organizations are receiving significantly less money. So much so that, during my research, organizations have discussed closing shelters, reducing 24/7 hotlines, and cutting frontline staff positions. The recently signed Wisconsin Act 241 was a good first step toward committing support to help victims, but even Governor Evers acknowledged that much remains to be done to provide resources for victims of domestic violence.
While I’m encouraged that so many Wisconsinites are concerned about gun violence, I think often about how many lives have been lost to get to this inflection point and how policies that could concretely help victims are often overlooked. As we chart a path forward, I hope that we don’t lose sight of the victims of domestic and intimate partner violence who make up such a large proportion of gun violence victims yet often get ignored in the conversation.
What matters to Wisconsin
The La Follette School of Public Affairs and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel are collaborating to share insights on how Wisconsinites feel about important policy topics through a yearlong project called the Main Street Agenda. Each month, the La Follette School and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel will feature a different policy topic, analyzing new statewide survey data to highlight what matters to Wisconsin. The WisconSays/La Follette Survey being used for the Main Street Agenda is a subset of the new WisconSays opinion panel based out of the UW-Madison Survey Center. There are more than 3,500 Wisconsinites enrolled in this representative panel.