Two women make sense of a lifetime of abuse and gun violence: ‘How did I get here?’

Women who have faced both domestic violence and community gun violence say it's clear the threats share root causes. So why are we treating them like separate problems?

By August of 2023, Alisha Thomas* had come to realize that she had two choices: leave her husband, or die. Their 20-year relationship had been rife with verbal and physical violence. Over the years, her husband had choked her, run over her foot with a car and thrown her down a flight of stairs, resulting in a miscarriage. She had told him their marriage wasn't going to survive. The verbal abuse and harassment only worsened.

Four months later, her husband returned to their home one night, loaded his shotgun and berated her for hours - his finger on or near the trigger the entire time. The couple's teenage daughter heard the commotion and called the police, which gave Thomas a chance to escape the home and run to a local store, where she waited until the police arrived. Thomas tells me this story in September, displaying a mix of calm and disbelief at the realization that she had survived years of violence and a childhood and adolescence that made it all feel normal.