A police detective once joked with us that he was confused at a scene because he couldn’t tell whether there was domestic violence or if the couple were into BDSM. Cop jokes aside, domestic violence is serious. Gunplay is serious. But we find out that the rate of gunplay in domestic violence is both rare and compartmentalized. Takeaways Guns are used in less than 3% of all domestic violence incidents. That drops to 1.3% if we eliminate merely brandishing a firearm as an act of intimidation. The rate of firearms in domestic violence between same-sex couples is nearly four times higher than their percentage of the population would otherwise predict. Cause(less) concerns We don’t take domestic violence lightly. In 2023, the year for which our data was extracted, there were over 877,196 incidents of domestic violence. We say “over” because our data comes from the FBI’s NIBRS data collection system. … Continue reading →