Domestic Violence Awareness Month has begun, and local advocacy group New Hope Midcoast marked the occasion with a lecture from Margaret Groban Sept. 30 at the YMCA. A retired federal prosecutor, Groban discussed the evolving federal response to domestic violence and firearms, and offered thoughts on Question 2 on the November ballot, which asks voters if they are in favor of tougher gun safety regulations.  

In addition to her work for the District of Maine, Groban has served as the national domestic violence coordinator for the U.S. Department of Justice and is a former member of Maine’s Domestic Violence Homicide Review Panel.   

According to statistics Groban shared during the presentation, when a gun is in the home, an abused woman is six times more likely than other abused women to be killed. While Groban doesn’t want to minimize that many women feel safer with a gun in the home, she said cases have shown women have been murdered with their own firearms by intimate partners.   

Groban said domestic violence is also often a component in mass shooting incidents, with 68% of mass shooters having either killed their family/intimate partners or having a history of domestic violence.   

“The Supreme Court, over the years, has not agreed on much, but they have agreed on the importance of fighting domestic violence and keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers,” she said.   

Many of the decisions the Supreme Court has ruled on in the past three decades regarding domestic violence interact with the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which was first passed in 1994 and has been amended several times since, Groban said. For instance, crimes that cross state boundaries are often elevated to the federal level, and VAWA has provisions about interstate domestic violence, stalking/cyberstalking and violation of protection orders, she said. 

VAWA also created amendments to the Gun Control Act (1968), so that someone can be prosecuted if they are in possession of a firearm or ammunition while subject to a qualifying protection order or if they are convicted of a domestic violence misdemeano, Groban said. She said a person must represent a credible threat to the physical safety of the intimate partner to fit the criteria for a protection order. 

Groban explained, “The reason this law looks to violence, force and physical harm is because you are taking away someone's gun rights away. That's why there's a requirement that it only be for someone who is dangerous in a physical way.”  

Several cases have come before the Supreme Court in recent years clarifying and challenging this idea as conversations around the Second Amendment have shifted. According to Groban, before 2008, it was more common for the amendment to be interpreted as “a collective right (rather than) an individual right to have a firearm.”  

Most recently, the case US v Rahimi (2024) asked whether prohibiting the possession of firearms by someone subject to a domestic violence restraining order violates the Second Amendment, Groban said. However, the court upheld that a person who poses a credible physical threat to another may be temporarily disarmed, she said. 

Groban finished the lecture with a brief discussion of the proposed “red flag” law, also known as an extreme protection order, on the November state ballot. The question asks whether voters are in favor of a person being temporarily prohibited from having dangerous weapons if it is proven that they are at risk of causing physical harm to themselves or others.   

According to the Maine Morning Star, red flag laws are currently active in 21 states, including four in New England, and Maine is the only one with a yellow flag law, which allows law enforcement to take guns away from people after a mental health evaluation.   

The proposed law would not eliminate the current procedure, but act in addition to it, said Groban. She said it would also expedite the process and shift the emphasis from mental health to separating an individual from their guns, as the presence of mental illness is not always an accurate indicator.   

“It's trying to prevent (shootings) from happening in the first place and doing it with the limited law enforcement resources that we have, the limited mental health resources that we have, and still giving someone sufficient due process and their Second Amendment protection.”