Barbara Finesmith is convinced she’d be dead today if her ex-husband had owned a gun during the 12 years he physically abused her.
“He’d grab whatever was at hand,” Finesmith said. “One time he used a golf club and swung it at my head. Another time it was a shoe. But I’m happy he got me with a shoe, and not a gun. Had he had a gun, I would be dead.”
The beatings she suffered aren’t something Finesmith, 56, particularly likes to talk about, especially in public.
But on Wednesday she went on the record to dramatize the need for legislation being proposed by a bipartisan group of state lawmakers. They want to take guns away from perpetrators of domestic violence or stalking.
Led by Reps. Rod Blagojevich (D-Chicago) and Tom Homer (D-Canton), the lawmakers are calling for new laws that would suspend the firearm privileges of people facing court action under Illinois stalking and domestic violence laws.
An anti-gun theme also was struck Wednesday in Washington, as Mayor Richard Daley and Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson urged their peers at the U.S. Conference of Mayors winter meeting to follow their lead and stop selling guns confiscated from criminals.
Under the proposed Illinois legislation, police could seize firearms from people charged with stalking, aggravated stalking, domestic violence with a firearm or violating an order of protection. If they were convicted, their firearm owner’s identification cards would be revoked and their guns destroyed.
The proposals come in the wake of several highly publicized slayings in which people were fatally shot despite court orders of protection, including that of Kimberly Globis, who was gunned down last October in front of her two children in Waukegan, allegedly by her ex-boyfriend Leslie Peace.
There also was Stacey Watson, whose ex-husband Tyrone is charged in a rampage last March through her Zion home that left one of their daughters dead, four other people injured and a 10-year-old girl raped.
Currently, Illinois law allows for the seizure of weapons only when police come upon a scene of domestic violence and have probable cause to believe the weapon was used in a criminal incident.
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National statistics show that firearms are used in 70 percent of homicides involving women who were killed by current or former husbands or boyfriends.
Firearms were also the weapon of choice among stalkers, who were responsible for the killing of more than 1,500 women nationwide in 1992, according to statistics provided by Illinois Citizens for Handgun Control.
“There’s a terrible misconception that the (gun) violence is all random, and mostly gang-related,” said Phil Andrew, the anti-handgun group’s executive director. “But less than 10 percent of the violence is of that nature. Well over half the violence is among people who know each other.”
The state lawmakers, who also include Republican Reps. Carolyn Krause of Mt. Prospect and Virginia Frederick of Lake Forest, intend to introduce the legislation in the General Assembly this spring. They said they did not envision strong opposition to the measures, even though there may be some constitutional questions.
They may be right. A lobbyist for the Illinois State Rifle Association said she didn’t think the group would oppose the bills.
“Something has to be done about the criminal use of handguns,” said lobbyist Pam Valentino. “We’ve always encouraged legislation that would take guns away from people who shouldn’t have them.”
And a spokesman for Gov. Jim Edgar said the state’s chief executive officer also favors laws that would take guns out of the hands of stalkers.
Finesmith, who now heads a legal-aid clinic for victims of domestic abuse, said that although no one is naive enough to believe the new measures will end domestic violence, they could help alleviate the carnage that stems from it.
“Getting hit by a hand or a fist is a lot less lethal than getting shot by a gun,” she said.
At the Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington, the focus was on what to do with guns once they’re confiscated from criminals. Johnson, the mayor of Phoenix, told a subcommittee on criminal justice that “cities are the single largest suppliers of guns on the streets of America,” noting that at least 100 city governments turn around and sell firearms taken from offenders.
Phoenix stopped selling guns last month, after a vote in the City Council. In Chicago, a policy of destroying seized weapons dates back at least as far as the 1950s, said a Daley spokeswoman.
“We can destroy the weapons our police departments seize, rather than turning around and putting those guns back on the streets in our cities-or in some other city,” the mayors said in a letter drafted by Johnson.
Johnson wants his colleagues to adopt a “meltdown” policy for all confiscated weaponry in time for the June meeting of the conference, and has urged U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to withhold community-policing grants from cities that continue the lucrative practice of selling seized weapons, usually to professional gun dealers.