My eldest daughter, a composer-performer, was scheduled to play a viola concert at the Carlsbad Music Festival in California, Aug. 2-4. Of course I was elated for her. But then, on July 28, at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, 16 people were shot, four fatally, including a gunman and two children. Selfishly, I googled “Gilroy and Carlsbad” — I wanted to know how close the cities were. Not only my daughter, but also my wife, would be in Carlsbad. OK — approximately 400 miles, a seven-hour drive. Not too bad, but still …

And so, after Aug. 3 and 4 — when we had a combined 31 murders in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas — I began talking to friends about these events. Of course we feel the empathy and our aloha goes out to the family and friends of the victims — but we also tend to take consolation in the fact that, as one of my tennis buddies said, “We don’t have that kind of thing happening here.”

“But yes we do,” I responded.

After all, we have family and friends who live on the mainland; our friends visit the mainland all the time, e.g., Las Vegas. In 2017 a lone gunman killed 58 people and wounded 422 concertgoers at the Harvest Music Festival on the Las Vegas Strip. Any of our friends and loved ones could have been among the victims. Any of our children or grandchildren in school on the mainland could be at a festival or movie theater or mall where someone decides to open fire.

My youngest daughter came to mind, as she is currently in New York City where, as a result of fear of mass shootings, a backfire from a motorcycle on Aug. 6 caused thousands of people to panic in Time Square.

It is true that we do not have a large Mexican/Mexican-American community, targeted by some. Also, we do not have large Jewish, Islamic or African-American communities that are so prominent that their temples, mosques and churches are bombed while they pray to their God. Furthermore, we do not have the gang violence that creates much of the mass shootings on record.

However, as a founding member of the Men’s March Against Violence 25 years ago, I am aware of the intimate partner violence that plagues our Hawaii. We do experience gun-related as well as other types of domestic-violence murders. In fact, one friend in our tennis group was murdered this year by a boyfriend who pushed her off a balcony in Waikiki.

It is my hope that our problem with intimate partner violence is not overshadowed by the media exposure given to the mass-shooting, gun violence on the mainland.

Please be aware that abused women are five times more likely to be killed by their domestic abuser if he owns a gun. Please be aware that of the 133 mass shootings between 2009-2015, 57% involved an intimate partner or family member being shot. And finally, please be aware that in 2016, according to a study of FBI data by the Violence Policy Center, 1,809 women were murdered by men in single-victim incidents. Of those where the relationship could be identified, 93%, or 1,537 out of 1,651, were men they knew, and 63% were husbands or intimate acquaintances.

Let us reduce the effects of violence by getting the guns out of our community. We certainly can start with automatic and semiautomatic weapons, background checks and prohibitions on gun ownership for anyone who has committed violence or has a temporary restraining order against them.

Salvatore Lanzilotti, Ed.D., is retired from the City & County of Honolulu and the University of Hawaii.