Intimate partner violence (IPV) affects over 12 million people annually in the United States, and firearm access significantly heightens the risk of serious harm. While many states have enacted firearm prohibitor laws restricting access through domestic violence restraining orders (DVROs) and temporary restraining orders (TROs), some include employment-based exemptions that allow individuals to retain firearms due to their profession. This brief report analyzes state firearm prohibitor laws, focusing on employment exemptions, and presents legal data on the evolution of these laws nationwide.

In this article, published in the Journal of Family Violence, researchers followed the policy surveillance process to create a longitudinal dataset measuring key features of firearm prohibitor laws from January 1, 2014, to January 1, 2020, across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The dataset shows that as of January 1, 2020, 42 states enacted firearm prohibitor laws restricting firearm access through DVROs, with 20 of those states also extending restrictions through TROs. Of these 42 states, 11 had officer-based employment exemptions. These 11 states varied widely in the scope of their exemptions and the level of legal protection afforded to survivors.