A FAREWELL TO ARMS

By Mark Thompson/Washington

Until her divorce last year, Annette LaFrancis was routinely beaten by her husband, a Navy submariner with the rank of chief petty officer. He was eventually convicted of assault, but LaFrancis can never forget how often she feared for her life. Her terror was compounded by six guns he had illicitly stashed in their Navy-owned house in Groton, Conn. "I'd worry that one day he'd flip out and use one on me," she says.

The Pentagon is getting ready to protect wives like LaFrancis from their armed husbands. The story of how this came to be is partly about unintended consequences and partly about how the values of the civilian world are increasingly encroaching on the military. Last fall Congress passed a wide-ranging law meant to combat domestic violence in all corners of American society by banning weapons from those convicted of such crimes. So sometime next month the Pentagon plans to begin enforcing the law in its own ranks by stripping weapons from hundreds, if not thousands, of military personnel. Anyone who has been convicted of abusing a spouse will be forced to surrender pistols, rifles, machine guns and other hand-carried weapons.

What seems like a simple solution to a chronic problem in civilian life takes on complications in a fighting force. Pentagon attorneys say the law's definition of "firearms" is so broad that by year's end the military may have to bar those convicted of familial violence from operating weapons like M-1 tanks, F-16 jet fighters and MX missiles, among others. And nothing is simple at the Pentagon: military pilots, after all, must carry sidearms to protect themselves and their planes when flying into trouble spots. So even if an F-16 is not deemed a "firearm" under the final policy, a pilot convicted of domestic abuse could no longer carry the requisite 9-mm pistol--and thus could no longer fly.

That prospect puzzles Senator Frank Lautenberg, the Democrat from New Jersey who is the author of the bill. "I've never heard of a man killing his spouse with an F-16," he says. "That borders on the goofy." But that was an unwitting legacy of Republican lawmakers. In a ploy that backfired, gun-rights supporters, led by G.O.P. Representative Bob Barr of Georgia, quietly removed the exemption for the military and the police that had always been part of federal gun-control laws. The lawmakers apparently hoped the prospect of disarming G.I.s and cops would force Congress to kill the measure. That didn't happen, and the measure was passed during the gargantuan, all-night effort to avoid a government shutdown. Before the potential implications for the military had become clear, Lautenberg was pleased. He had taken a predawn catnap in the Senate cloakroom and awakened to a beefed-up bill. "A spouse is a spouse is a spouse," he says, "and we can't excuse that kind of behavior, even for a soldier."

Pentagon officials voice concern that the law applies to anyone ever convicted of domestic violence, including those whose strife was patched up long ago and whose families have lived happily ever after. Booting such individuals from the military could cost them--and their family--retirement benefits. They could seek to have the conviction expunged, or could be offered Stateside desk jobs if they are close to retirement, especially in the Air Force and Navy, where many such jobs exist. "But if they're in the Marines or the Army," an Army lawyer says, "it's going to be a job-termination thing."

Yet many soldiers privately welcome the law. Such abuse is more frequent in military families than civilian ones, and the warrior culture is partly to blame. "Behaviors and attitudes supporting violence in general may be learned or reinforced by military combat training," says a recent Pentagon study of domestic violence. Defense officials said last week that they have no idea how many soldiers will be affected by the law. But a Pentagon study last year found that more than 50,000 members of the military had hit or otherwise hurt their spouse between 1991 and 1995. How many have been convicted of criminal abuse is uncertain, so the brass plans to make all 1.4 million soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines fill out forms detailing any such convictions, including misdemeanors. Anyone caught lying on the disclosure form could face a prison term as long as 10 years plus a $250,000 fine.

The Pentagon waited until midsummer to begin figuring out how to comply with the law, partly because it hoped the law would change and partly because it dreaded what would happen if it didn't. In contrast, the Justice Department has already acted: it has removed 83 workers from pistol-packing posts. But at the Pentagon, with nearly 25 times the armed personnel, the number of shifts could be dramatic. All of which has the Pentagon proceeding cautiously. And that worries people like LaFrancis. "It's terrible to say," she says, "but I'm afraid somebody in the military is going to have to kill his spouse in a real public way before they start enforcing it."