One bit of woeful shorthand used in tallying the nation’s gun carnage is “I.P.V.” — intimate partner violence. This is a category in which each week close to 10 women are shot to death by their husbands, boyfriends or former dating partners. The victims and gunmen go unnoticed on the national scene unless the shooting turns into a larger tragedy, like the school invasion on Monday in California, in which a man murdered his wife as she taught class and, in his rampage, killed an 8-year-old student.
It turned out that the man, who ended his spree with suicide, had a history of domestic violence and threats that should have denied him ownership of a firearm. But, as with so many of the nation’s shameful gun control laws, weak enforcement and loopholes helped perpetrate another I.P.V. shooting.
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