From the
President
Wayne Tuckson, MD
GLMS President | [email protected]
INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE: It Doesn’t Have
to End That Way
T
he opening verse of Jimi Hendrix’s
rendition of “Hey Joe” is “Hey Joe,
where you going with that gun in
your hand? I’m going down to shoot
my old lady, you know, I caught her
messing around with another man.” In the
original version this is the second verse, and
the first verse is “Hey Joe, where you goin’
with that money in your hand? Chasin’ my
woman, she run off with another man. Goin’
downtown, buy me a .44.”
Another change in Hendrix’s version
is the addition of a female chorus which
repeats the phrase “Hey, hey, hey Joe” at first
in a whisper then gradually increasing in
intensity throughout the song. This, to me,
reflects his better half trying to dissuade
him from his actions. Alas, it fails since he
does kill his lady.
This song is a cautionary tale of Intimate
Partner Violence (IPV). In the US, we have
a big problem of IPV, and it appears in many
different guises. Perhaps the most severe of
these is the attack which ends in homicide.
In a 2016 FBI report on crime, there were
760 homicides related to IPV, and though
both men and women may be victims, over
75 percent are women. Every month, 50
women are killed as a consequence of IPV
and, in most of these cases, a gun was used.
In the US a woman is 16 times more likely
to be shot or killed than a woman in any
other developed country. 1 Let us think on
this as we cast judgment upon about how
other countries and cultures treat women.
The Gifford Law Center to Prevent Gun
Violence reports that women are five times
more likely to be killed by their abuser if the
abuser owns a firearm. 2 The presence of a
gun changes the dynamics of the abuser and
the abused. The severity and deadliness of
IPV increase when the violent partner has
access to firearms, even though the gun
may not be the murder weapon. However,
in those states with statutes prohibiting gun
ownership by persons under domestic vio-
lence restraining orders, there is a reduction
in intimate partner homicide 3 .
We must re-examine who may and may
not have access to guns of any type. I accept
that there is honest debate on general gun
control measures. However, I cannot see
how one can argue against denying access
to a gun to a person with a proven history
of domestic abuse.
There is merit to the argument that re-
stricting individual gun purchases is diffi-
cult because of the number in circulation
and accessibility through loopholes and il-
legal means. However, this just points to the
need for a more coherent federal policy on
gun sales rather than the current markedly
ineffective patchwork of varying states’ laws.
In a retort to an argument for having
non-smoking and smoking areas in the
same restaurant, someone once remarked
that this was akin to having a urinating and
non-urinating section in the same pool.
Guns, like smoke and fluids, do not respect
borders. Statistics on origination of guns
from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Fire-
arms and Explosives show that 49 percent
of firearms recovered in one state were pur-
chased in another state; 65 percent of guns
which were recovered in states with restric-
tive gun laws were not purchased in those
states; and 44 percent of guns recovered
were from states with the least restrictive
gun laws 4 .
Gun violence is a public health crisis,
and domestic violence is a moral travesty
and a stain on our social fabric. As Dr. Erick
J. Olson, a trauma surgeon at the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania put it, “As physicians
and surgeons, our job is to find a cure for
whatever pathogen is out there that is hin-
dering or causing our patients’ illness. In
the trauma community, we just strongly feel
that the pathogens are firearms or bullets.”
For those who either cannot or will not
heed their better instincts, we must place
barriers that keep them from bringing vio-
lent thoughts to fruition. In short to protect
those who need our protection, we must say
“Hey Joe, we ain’t gonna let you get a gun in
your hand.”
I am not so naive as to believe IPV will
go away with restriction of gun ownership.
However, I bet anyone of those 50 women
who will be shot this month would have
liked us to do something to protect them
from dying.
Dr. Tuckson is a practicing colon and rectal
surgeon.
Footnotes
1 Everytown Research
2 Gifford’s Law Center To Prevent Gun
Violence. Statistics on Domestic Violence and
Firearms.
3 Zeoli AM et al. Epidemiol Rev. 2016
4 Frangou C. General Surgery News. 2018
FEBRUARY 2019
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