The Gun In the Room: The Lethality of Intimate Partner Violence

In April 2026, four women made the news for the same reason. In Florida, Coral Springs Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer Bowen was shot and killed by her husband as their relationship collapsed. Dr. Cerina Wanzer Fairfax was shot and killed by her husband in Virginia in the midst of a tumultuous divorce. In New Jersey, Monica Morris was fatally stabbed by her partner after sharing that she wanted to leave their marriage. And in Louisiana, a domestic violence incident between Shaneiqua Pugh and her husband escalated into the fatal shooting of eight children. Four cases. Four states. One month. Media coverage calls these cases unexpected tragedies. I call them predictable policy failures.

As a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Davis, Centers for Violence Prevention, I study how firearm access and policy environments determine whether intimate partner violence becomes lethal. What I see in these four cases is a pattern that public health researchers have documented for decades. We are overlooking our most powerful tool for preventing intimate partner homicide: restricting firearm access for domestic violence perpetrators.

Firearms Turn Violence Into Homicide

The stories of the Black women killed by their partners in April are not isolated incidents. According to the Violence Policy Center, Black women make up only 14% of the population but account for 30% of women killed by men. A 2024 Lancet study found that firearm homicides are concentrated among Black women in every region of the United States. The most recent deaths of Dr. Wanzer Fairfax, Nancy Metayer Bowen, and Monica Morris, and the shooting of Shaneiqua Pugh and her children, represent the most recent occurrence of this phenomenon.

Removing a gun from an abusive partner is one of the most immediate ways to reduce the chance of a woman being killed.

I cannot overstate how clear the firearm-lethality connection is. Firearms don’t only create risk; they transform survivable domestic violence into irreversible tragedy. Giffords Law Center reports that when an abusive partner has access to a gun, the risk that a woman will be killed increases significantly. A 2025 Violence and Gender study found that firearm injuries related to intimate partner violence had more than double the fatality rate of all other firearm injuries. A 2023 analysis using data from the National Violent Death Reporting System found that states with stronger domestic violence-related gun laws have much lower rates of women being shot and killed by partners than states with weaker laws. What this difference shows is that gun access drives the risk.

We Know What Works

What frustrates me most is that effective solutions for preventing Black women from being killed by their partners already exist. Because guns are so often used in intimate partner homicides, federal and state laws have been put in place to prevent dangerous people from buying or possessing firearms if they have been convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor. A 2021 study examining the association of firearm restriction laws on intimate partner homicides concluded that state-level policies reduced firearm deaths among White women but had a limited impact for Black women. Though these policies can and do work, other studies have found that Black women face more barriers to seeking protection by the criminal justice system than White women, making these policies harder to implement for the people who need them most.

The gap between what we know works and what we actually do will continue to jeopardize women’s lives.

The Enforcement Failure and A Call to Action

The problem is not that we lack laws. Rather, we act too late and enforce them unevenly. Firearm restrictions need to be applied earlier, during separation, divorce, and other high-risk periods in relationships, before violence escalates. Removing a gun from an abusive partner is one of the most immediate ways to reduce the chance of a woman being killed.

The path forward is clear. We need stronger, consistent state and federal standards for firearm restrictions in domestic violence cases, real enforcement backed by resources, and intentional efforts to ensure these protections reach the communities most at risk. That also means addressing the barriers Black women face in accessing support — whether through legal systems, health care, or community resources. Protections need to be easy to access to meet the urgent, present danger experienced by women in their homes every day. Until that happens, the gap between what we know works and what we actually do will continue to jeopardize women’s lives.

The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of Public Health Post or Boston University School of Public Health.