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The 2019 Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act (VAWRA) is a thinly veiled effort by radical leadership in the Congress to bootstrap broad, unconstitutional legislation into federal law under the guise of protecting women.
Some of its provisions include changing the definition of “domestic abuse” to also include “verbal emotional, economic, or technological abuse or any other coercive behavior,” expanding the definition of “intimate partner” to include former partners who no longer live together, and defining “stalking” so broadly to include annoying, but physically harmless behavior such as making several phone calls.
Passage of VAWRA in its current form will result in the denial of due process by depriving Americans of a hearing before losing their rights and property. It will provide for the unconstitutional federalization of state resources, dramatically expanding the federal government’s reach into matters traditionally controlled by the states.
And, crucially, it will permanently deprive people of their fundamental human right to keep and bear arms on the basis of nonviolent misdemeanors.For these reasons, VAWRAis not only flawed, but dangerous and unconstitutional.Firearms Policy Coalition(FPC) thus opposes VAWRA.
VAWRA introduces new language that may result in perverse outcomes including, but not limited to, the following:
●An individual could be prosecuted for nonviolent disorderly conduct on a first date, branded a domestic abuser, and denied permission to purchase firearms;
●After receiving a pardon, expungement, and/or total restoration of constitutional rights, an individual would still be denied his right to secure firearms;
●Federalizing local resources to arrest people for potentially erroneous results on a background check;22and,
●Federalizing local resources to prosecute people for attempting to make a purely intrastate firearms purchase (if UBC or state legislation required submission to a NICS check).
The original VAWA was never intended to be a vessel for gun control. The 2019 VAWRA is an express attempt to dramatically expand the scope of federal criminal law—and sacrifice the rights of an unknowable number of people—for purely political reasons detached from constitutional principles and evidence. And there is precedent for opposing VAWRA, as it lapsed in 2011 due to changes less egregious than those here at hand.