Every month, an average of more than 70 women in the United States are shot and killed by an intimate partner. Everytownreasearch.org |
Every month, an average of more than 70 women in the United States are shot and killed by an intimate partner. Everytownreasearch.org | based on analysis of CDC National Violent Death Reporting System data from 2020–2023.
There is a way people try to split the human heart in two.
They act as if we must choose between caring about suffering across the world and caring about suffering here at home. They speak as though compassion were a small cup, as though if we pour some of it toward one grieving people, there will be none left for another.
We know the heart can stretch. We know grief can travel. We know a person can look across the ocean with sorrow and still look down their own street with urgency. We can grieve for children in war zones and still grieve for children lost to gunfire in American neighborhoods. We can care about families running from bombs and still care about families in the United States running from domestic violence, eviction, medical neglect, poverty, addiction, abuse, and despair.
A conscience does not become more holy by ignoring the pain closest to home.
Here in the United States, people are living under many kinds of pressure that shorten life. Some die suddenly. Some are worn down over time. Some are buried after one violent moment. Some are slowly pushed toward early death by systems that deny them healthcare, safety, rest, protection, and dignity.
Gun violence is one of the clearest wounds.
It has become so familiar that some people speak of it like weather. Another shooting. Another headline. Another vigil. Another family standing in front of cameras while their faces try to hold together what their hearts cannot yet understand.
Then the news moves on.
But families do not move on because the news cycle does.
They still have the room where someone used to sleep. They still have the favorite cereal in the cabinet. They still have birthday dates on the calendar. They still have text messages they read when the house is too quiet. They still have siblings who jump at loud sounds. They still have mothers who listen for a voice that will not come through the door again. They still have fathers, aunties, cousins, grandparents, neighbors, classmates, and friends trying to live around a space that used to be filled by someone beloved.
This is why memorials matter.
A site like GunMemorial.org does something that public arguments often refuse to do. It slows us down long enough to remember that every number was a person. Every person had a face. Every face belonged to a life. Every life had connections, stories, habits, plans, laughter, frustrations, favorite songs, favorite foods, people who knew how they walked, how they smiled, how they answered the phone.
National Gun Violence Memorial
Domestic violence is not separate from the gun violence crisis. In the United States, more than 70 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner in an average month, and the presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation can raise a woman’s risk of homicide by 500%. When lawmakers talk about gun deaths without naming domestic violence, they are leaving one of the most dangerous rooms in the house unlit.
Many families do not experience gun violence as something random that happens “out there.” For too many women, the danger is intimate. It has keys to the house. It knows her schedule. It has threatened her before. It may have already strangled, stalked, isolated, or terrorized her. And when that danger has access to a gun, the risk rises sharply. This is why domestic violence belongs at the center of any serious conversation about gun deaths in America.
When lawmakers talk about violence only in abstract language, they miss the weight families carry. Policy is not just paperwork. Policy is whether a child comes home. Policy is whether a woman can leave danger and survive. Policy is whether a community has the resources to interrupt harm before it becomes a funeral. Policy is whether grief becomes less common, or whether families are left to keep building private altars for public failures.
That is what we need our lawmaking leaders to understand.
We are not asking them to care about only one form of suffering. We are asking them to develop the moral range to see more than one harm at a time.
A serious leader should be able to care about global war and local gunfire. A serious leader should be able to speak about international human rights and still protect children in American schools. A serious leader should be able to condemn violence abroad while also facing domestic violence, child abuse, elder neglect, disability discrimination, racial harm, poverty, unsafe housing, and the despair that grows when people feel abandoned by every system around them.
Safety is not a slogan.
Safety is not a speech after tragedy.
Safety is not a candlelight vigil with no policy courage behind it.
Safety is what happens when leaders take seriously the conditions people are living under before death arrives. It is housing. It is healthcare. It is food. It is responsible gun policy. It is credible protection for victims. It is schools that do more than teach children how to hide from a shooter. It is communities where Black women are believed when they say they are afraid. It is hospitals where patients are heard before they are dismissed. It is support for disabled people and elders who ask for privacy, dignity, and protection. It is prevention that does not wait until someone is gone before admitting the danger was real.
We cannot keep treating preventable death as the price of living in America.
And we cannot allow anyone to tell us that speaking about these deaths means we lack compassion for the rest of the world.
That is a false choice.
We can mourn families overseas and families here. We can care about children across borders and children on our own blocks. We can send compassion outward and still demand accountability inward. We can pray for peace in distant places while also asking why peace is so hard to secure in our neighborhoods, homes, schools, churches, shelters, hospitals, and public spaces.
The human heart is capable of this.
The question is whether our leaders are.
So when we interface with lawmakers, we must come with names, not just numbers. We must come with stories, not just statistics. We must come with the truth that many of these harms are connected by the same old roots: neglect, greed, domination, denial, indifference, and the political habit of waiting until people die before admitting they were in danger.
We must remind them that every shortened life leaves a long shadow.
Somebody is standing in that shadow right now.
Somebody is trying to explain to a child why their friend is gone.
Somebody is choosing a funeral outfit for someone who should have had decades left.
Somebody is sitting in a house that feels too still.
Somebody is looking at a photograph and whispering, “You should still be here.”
We owe those families more than performance. We owe them more than selective grief. We owe them more than leaders who can find language for pain far away but lose their courage when the pain is here, funded here, legislated here, normalized here, and buried here.
We can care about the world without abandoning home.
We can hold more than one sorrow.
We can tell the truth about what is happening in this country without turning away from suffering elsewhere.
And we can say, with full moral clarity, that American families deserve more than memorial pages, news clips, and condolences.
They deserve prevention.
They deserve protection.
They deserve leaders who understand that life is not supposed to be this disposable.
They deserve a country that learns how to act before the altar has to be built.