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Congresswoman Debbie Dingell grew up living in terror, as too many children do.

Her father was abusive, but in those days, no one talked about it.

Let's face it. Too often, even today, we shy away from domestic violence, bleating that it's a "private family matter" when women and children are beaten bloody by the husbands and fathers who purport to love them.

Dingell recalled in a 2012 op-ed for the Washington Post one particularly horrific evening, when her father almost shot her mother, and she tried to grab the gun. But it was hardly the only time: 

"I will not forget the nights of shouting. The fear. The dread that my brother, my sisters and my parents would die. I will not forget locking ourselves in closets or hiding places hoping we wouldn't be found. Calling for help, but finding no one willing to help, to acknowledge the problem, or intervene.

"We survived that occasion, physically. Emotionally, I am not so sure."

Dingell shared this story again this week in a poignant letter to Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. She did so in urging him to veto SB 789, a bill that would have allowed domestic abusers to obtain a concealed pistol license.

"When someone has demonstrated they're capable of domestic abuse, it's a no-brainer," Dingell told me in a phone interview. "You don't know what's going to set someone off ... and then the gun is right there. That's a dangerous situation."

Unfortunately, orthodoxy overruns the gun-rights movement, and supporters insist that SB 789 wouldn't empower domestic abusers.

The bill analysis from the nonpartisan House Fiscal Agency says otherwise:

"[SB 789 would] allow the subject of a PPO for domestic violence or stalking to receive a CPL unless the order includes a restriction that the applicant is not allowed to purchase or possess a firearm." 

On Thursday, the governor did the right thing and vetoed the bill.

This was a rare moment of bipartisanship in Michigan. Dingell, a Democrat who was just sworn in to her first term in Congress, and Snyder, a Republican who just took the oath for his second term as governor, have some things in common.

"I'm so happy about what the governor did, I can't tell you," Dingell told me shortly after the veto. "I think today was really important. It would have been singularly the most irresponsible thing in the world to let domestic abusers have guns. This shows sanity can ring in the state. It's a really important day for women and children."

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