According to a new document from The Network: Advocating Against Domestic Violence, home violence-related murders in Illinois were considerably more deadly in 2023 despite their entire decline. In Illinois, according to the report, 130 people did perish as a result of local gun violence in 2024.
The report, released days after U. S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared gun crime a public health issue, documented 109 murders related to domestic violence, which killed 93 citizens in Illinois throughout 2023.
2022 saw 108 murders that resulted in 73 incidents, or 27 % fewer mortalities than in 2023. According to the report, home weapon violence-related deaths have increased since they last reached a recent nationwide low of 51 in 2020.
The report, the next installment of the firm’s” Measuring Health” line, noted that the increase in fatalities was partly due to an increase in murder-suicides related to domestic violence.
Last year even saw five gun-related home cataclysms in Illinois, which led to another 18 incidents and four injuries, according to the document.
According to the review, there were three more home annihilations in the state between January and May 2024, which would have resulted in the state losing seven of its families by December.
Maralea Negron, the director of legislation, advocacy and research for the Network, said several factors likely contributed to the rise in murders.
” When somebody goes to the extremes of killing an intimate partner or family member, they’re no shooting to destroy, for the most part they’re shooting to really kill”, she said.
According to her, cultural or economic factors can also affect the potential for a lethal abusive situation.
Home stress can affect a person’s need for control in different areas of their life because domestic assault tends to be rooted in a require for power and control, she said.
She said,” In an abusive circumstance, the person is trying to coerce that person to get them to accomplish what they want,” using any strategy at their disposal. There are typically different social and economic factors at play when anyone engages in these power and control interactions.
Negron argued that allowing people to control someone else is” the last resource in the toolkit” for them.
The Network and other pro-family assault activists have spent the majority of the year lobbying state politicians to go HB 4469, known as” Karina’s Bill” in honor of Little Village resident Karina Gonzalez, whose spouse is accused of shooting and killing her and their 15-year-old girl in July 2023. About two weeks prior to her death, Gonzalez had a security order against her husband.
The legislation, which is currently pending in the Senate, would understand when and how law enforcement may seize firearms from people who have protective orders against them. Even if the victim’s firearm identification card is essentially revoked, firearms are still not always removed from those involved in those circumstances.
In response to the new U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding a law that forbids people from possessing firearms, Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, made the announcement last month that lawmakers would explore the plan.
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