Violence Against Women Act Gets Tangled Up In Gun Rights Debate

The House will take a divisive vote today to renew a lapsed 1994 law to protect victims of domestic and sexual violence because it includes new provisions to expand transgender rights and restrict gun rights. The Democratic additions to the law have exposed fault lines within the GOP as it wrestles with how to regain support among women. "I think we need to speak to everyone, including women, and talk about the issues they care about and take reasonable, pragmatic positions, and this is one of them," Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., told NPR. He is the lone GOP cosponsor of a bill to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. He represents a swing district and survived the woman-fueled, 2018 Democratic wave. However, House Republicans broadly object to at least four new policies added to the bill to reauthorize VAWA — which expired back in February when Democrats objected to GOP efforts to include a short-term extension of the law in a spending deal. But the most controversial are new provisions to lower the criminal threshold to bar someone from buying a gun to include misdemeanor convictions of domestic abuse or stalking charges. Current law applies to felony convictions. It would also close the so-called "boyfriend loophole" to expand existing firearm prohibitions to include dating partners convicted of abuse or stalking charges."Sometimes things are as simple as this: If we are doing a Violence Against Women Act and we are trying to save lives, why would you not close a simple loophole that says if someone has been convicted — convicted not accused! — convicted of domestic violence, that they not have access to a gun," said Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., who has shared her experiences growing up with an abusive father who owned a gun in her efforts to get

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