When an abuser has a gun: How much protection does a state provide?

Federal law prohibits domestic abusers from possessing firearms, but that prohibition is only as strong as the mechanism a state builds around it. Nationally, gun possession is banned for people under a domestic violence restraining order or conviction, yet only 18 states actually require the guns to be surrendered, and just 22 states allow courts to remove firearms based on potential risk. That gap between prohibition and enforcement means a woman's protection from an armed abuser can depend less on federal law than on which state, or even which county, she happens to live in.

Why it Matters

Domestic violence harms millions of Americans, men, women, and children, every year, and adding a firearm only increases the threat faced by so many who live in dangerous situations.

The presence of a gun makes it five times more likely that the woman will be killed in these settings of intimate partner violence. Overall, women experience a significant threat to safety by allowing violent abusers to have firearms within a home. Yet, despite this risk, there remains a lack of enforcement and protection for women in these scenarios.

Federal Framework

In 1996, Congress passed the Lautenberg Amendment to the Gun Control Act, making it a federal crime for anyone convicted of domestic violence to to ship, transport, possess, or receive firearms or ammunition. A companion law bars firearm possession by people subject to domestic violence restraining orders and this law was upheld in 2024 by the Supreme Court in United States V Rahimi. The 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act updated the framework so that a convicted abusive boyfriend, not just intimate partner, can now be disarmed, closing a loophole that had harmed many women for years. This foundation is the minimum standard that states must comply with, but protections for women rely much more on the state they reside in.

State Framework

States diverge along at least four distinct axes:

1. Does the state prohibit gun possession in these situations? Federal law applies in every state, but states vary in whether they have their own laws prohibiting firearm possession in these circumstances. Some states go further than federal law, covering dating partners, emergency (ex parte) orders, or stalking convictions that federal law doesn't reach. Some of the most protective states prohibit the purchase or possession of firearms by individuals convicted of any violent misdemeanor regardless of relationship to the victim.

2. Does the state require the abuser to turn guns in? Even if an abuser is prevented from purchasing a weapon, there is still a threat if there is no mechanism for relinquishing the guns actively in their possession.

18 states require the surrender of guns and/or ammunition following a conviction of a domestic violence misdemeanor
This leaves 33 states, including Washington, D.C that do not mandate the physical relinquishment or surrender of weapons already owned

3. Can a court remove guns before a conviction or a formal DV order based on risk alone? This is what Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs), or "red-flag laws," do. As of 2025, 22 states and D.C. have them. These civil orders let family members or law enforcement petition a court to temporarily remove firearms from someone who is showing signs of being a risk to themselves or others, without a criminal charge or a domestic violence order in place. In a domestic violence context, ERPOs can act faster than waiting for a criminal conviction or domestic-violence order, but only in the roughly 40 percent of states that have them.

4. Does the state report domestic violence offenses to the NICS Databases? Only four states have enacted laws that are designed to ensure records related to domestic violence convictions are submitted to the NICS Database, which is used for firearm purchaser background checks. These states include New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Minnesota.

Limits to Legislation

While policies may seem effective, there are many limits that alter how individuals are impacted across states and counties:

State preemption laws: As a result of lobbying by the National Rifle Association, more than 40 states have laws barring cities and counties from passing tighter gun regulations tailored to their specific circumstances. Some states have gone further, explicitly barring localities from enforcing red-flag orders at all.
Red-flag repeal efforts: A handful of state legislatures have introduced bills to repeal existing extreme risk protection order laws entirely, arguing they do not provide the individual with due process, indicating that these protections are still at risk of being repealed once passed.
The "unregistered firearm" gap: Even the best relinquishment laws generally rely on knowing what guns someone owns. Guns that were never registered are effectively outside the reach of a seizure warrant and remain a threat to victims of intimate partner violence.

A Few Examples

Despite these restrictions, most states present a discrepancy between the law and practice. The states below demonstrate the range of variation in legislation regarding firearm regulation for abusers, depicting gubernatorial limitations, political restrictions and resource constraints.

Illinois: Illinois has already prohibited domestic abusers from having guns under a protective order, but for years nobody was clearly responsible for collecting them. Karina's Law closed that loophole starting in 2025: abusers served with an emergency order must surrender firearms immediately, or within 24 hours, empowering judges to issue search warrants if not turned over. But nearly half of those warrants were later dismissed, often because of procedural challenges due to domestic violence survivors having to fill out their own warrants.

Virginia: Virginia's red-flag law lets courts issue extreme risk protection orders requiring firearm surrender when someone poses a danger. But usage varies by locality: some counties file dozens of petitions a year; and others, with similar rates of domestic-violence calls, file almost none. Meanwhile, the state's governor vetoed 42 gun-reform bills between 2022 and 2025, including measures meant to strengthen firearm-surrender enforcement in domestic violence cases specifically, arguing existing law was sufficient.

Texas: Texas law is compatible with federal law, but Texas has no statewide mechanism requiring abusers to prove they've actually surrendered their weapons. Attempts to pass a statewide relinquishment law have repeatedly failed in the legislature. In 2025, Texas went further in the opposite direction, passing the Anti-Red Flag Act, which makes it a felony for a judge to issue an Extreme Risk Protective Order and bars the state from accepting federal funds to implement one.

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