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Firearms Surrender and Protection Orders: North Carolina

Author:Beth Moracco, The University of North Carolina at Chapen Hill

In this webinar, originally titled Firearms Surrender, Retrieval and Protection Orders: Research and Practice in North Carolina, Dr. Moracco reviews the findings and recommendations of a study she co-authored in 2006, Preventing Firearms Violence Among Victims of Intimate Partner Violence: An Evaluation of a New North Carolina Law. The full text of the study is available below.

Judges in North Carolina routinely issued protection orders that included firearms prohibitions, including directives to surrender firearms to law enforcement within 24 hours of service of the protection order. However, no system for law enforcement follow-up and documentation of retrieval was implemented although there was evidence that one-third of the defendants had access to firearms at the time of the protection order hearings, approximately one quarter had used guns against intimate partners in the 12 months prior to the filing of the complaint, and over half of the defendants had criminal histories related to domestic violence offenses pre-dating the protection order application. Almost no firearms were confiscated or surrendered.

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