When Abusers Keep Their Guns

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

News

4.7 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2021

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Reveal’s Jennifer Gollan leads an investigation that exposes the consequences of passing gun laws with no teeth. For the first time, Reveal tallies the number of intimate partners, children and bystanders whose lives are shattered by abusers who fail to give up their firearms. Our analysis of 21 states finds that from 2017 through 2020, at least 110 intimate partners, children and bystanders were killed by suspects using guns they weren’t allowed to have under federal law and, in some cases, state law as well. This is likely a massive undercount because the federal government does not track the number of people killed by intimate partners who are prohibited from possessing guns.

We meet Chad Absher, who even as a young man could not control his rage. He was convicted of shooting at an ex-girlfriend's house, which meant he could never have a gun again. Absher’s story with guns should have ended there, but it didn’t.

Gollan picks up his story years later when Absher starts dating another young woman, Ashlee Rucker. It isn’t long before he becomes controlling and abusive, and Rucker wants out of the relationship. But Absher won’t let go and, once again, threatens violence. Despite the law, he has a firearm.

In the final segment, Gollan tracks the law enforcement failures that make it possible for felons such as Absher to possess guns. From the local sheriff to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and a member of Congress, Gollan discovers that laws that have been on the books for decades have very few enforcement mechanisms. She also speaks with a prosecutor in King County, Washington, which is trying to make the laws work as they were originally intended.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Alan. I hope 2022 has been a good year for you. But to be honest, it's been a tough one for us.
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1:34.0	From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is reveal. I'm Al Etzen.
1:46.0	As a felony prosecutor, lane cooks saw all kinds of cases, drug sales, robberies, burglaries.
1:55.0	But there was one case that stood out to her when she took the job back in 2006.
2:00.0	It's very rare that we have a young person who is being so scary.
2:08.0	This is a good time to tell you that this episode is not appropriate for young kids and other sensitive listeners.
2:15.0	Anyway, Chad Absher, the defendant in this case, was just 20 years old and he'd already had a distinctive tattoo inked on his chest.
2:23.0	I'm all about tattoos, but getting a tattoo of a clown with a pistol at such a young age.
2:30.0	Chad had been dating a teenager who was still in high school in Jacksonville, Florida, where they both lived.
2:36.0	They'd known each other since she was in the fourth grade.
	...

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