In a year that seemed to be tarnished by catastrophic events worldwide, 2016 was also a year marked by the consistent domestic tragedy of gun violence. The Pulse nightclub massacre, the shooting of five Dallas police officers during a Black Lives Matter protest, and the deaths of several unarmed black men at the hands of the police are just several of the many instances of gun violence on record. According to the Gun Violence Archive, more than 383 mass-shooting incidents (an occurrence that the organization defines as when four or more people are killed or injured) and nearly 15,000 gun deaths occurred over the course of 2016 alone.
But among mass shootings in which four or more people, not including the gunman, were killed, there were many that seemed to fall under the radar—instances of gun violence that, as the Huffington Post reports, were perpetrated by domestic abusers and overwhelmingly affected women and children.
Last June Cynthia Villegas told family that after years of abuse she had asked her husband for a divorce. She informed a relative that if anything were to happen to her, her husband would likely be the perpetrator. Just days later she and her four daughters had all been shot and killed by her husband, Juan Villegas-Hernandez, inside of their New Mexico home. [Read Full Article]
