Why is domestic violence surging during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Why is domestic violence surging during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Position‹2 of 2: Financial and safety concerns amplify domestic violence amid COVID-19 pandemic
Argument1 of 2›: Surge in firearms amid COVID-19 pandemic

Fears about COVID-19 and its broader societal and economic impacts have fueled a rush on gun stores. The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of homicide by 500%.

The argument

Data released by the hotline on March 25 shows that roughly 6 percent of the 951 callers who mentioned the COVID-19 crisis between March 10 and March 25 also said that they had been threatened or harmed with a gun. Callers who mentioned COVID-19 were more likely to mention guns than callers who did not. Research shows that an abuser with access to a gun is five times more likely to kill his victim than one without. Even when abusers do not shoot or kill their victims, Ray-Jones said, they often use the threat of gun violence to rape, terrorize, or to hold them hostage. Ray-Jones said reports that many people buying guns now are first-time gun owners with no training or experience are also troubling, since novice owners are more likely to store a gun unsafely or fire one accidentally. “Surging gun sales and shelter-in-place orders are leaving domestic violence victims trapped with their abusers, who, in America, have easy access to guns, and that is a deadly combination,” said Shannon Watts, founder of the gun safety group Moms Demand Action, in an interview.

Premises

[P1]Hotline data shows callers mentioning COVID-19 are disproportionately likely to also report being threatened or harmed with a gun. [P2] Abusers with access to firearms are far more likely to kill or terrorize their victims, and surging first-time gun purchases compound this risk. [P3] Shelter-in-place orders trap victims with abusers who now have easier access to guns. [C] Therefore, the pandemic-era surge in firearms is amplifying domestic violence amid COVID-19.

Counter-arguments

Critics respond that the evidence is thin and correlational. A six-per-cent gun co-mention among the self-selected callers who happened to raise COVID cannot isolate firearms from the confinement, job loss, isolation and alcohol that lockdown intensified all at once. Most pandemic firearm buyers were households acting on general safety fears, which is not the same as abusers arming themselves; and the frequently cited lethality multiplier describes abusers who already owned guns, not the newly purchased ones. Reported domestic-violence contacts actually fell in some jurisdictions as victims lost the private moments needed to call — a reminder that hotline data track help-seeking, not incidence.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] A 6% gun co-mention among callers who raised COVID is a correlation in self-reported data that cannot separate firearms from the many other simultaneous lockdown stressors. [Rejecting P2] The 'five times more likely to kill' figure describes abusers who already possessed firearms, not first-time pandemic buyers, and a household purchase is not equivalent to an abuser acquiring a weapon. [Rejecting P3] Shelter-in-place traps victims with abusers regardless of gun sales, so it does not show that the firearm surge specifically amplified the abuse.