Phyllis McEleney on Tuesday wore a pin to the General Assembly bearing pictures of her daughter, Corda'e Shimira Lee, her grandson Kendall Alexander Dianis and her daughter's friend Valerie Gates.

Gates' father, Alan Douglas Gates, shot and killed them last year in an Orange County house.

Janet Clark Gates, his wife, had obtained a domestic violence order banning him from the house. But Alan Gates was waiting when his daughter, Lee, and 2 1/2-year-old Kendall arrived there unexpectedly -- and he had a gun. Now, he is serving three consecutive life sentences for killing them.

"You can be so far removed from domestic violence, and it can still happen to you," said McEleney, who lives in Raleigh.

She came to the state House to plead for a law requiring defendants in some domestic violence cases to surrender their guns.

"Remove the firearms, defuse the situation and allow people to live a little longer," said Sen. Tony Rand, a Fayetteville Democrat and the bill's sponsor. The bill has passed the Senate and awaits action by a House committee.

The N.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence counts 28 domestic violence homicides this year, at least 22 of them committed with firearms.

The bill would require judges issuing domestic violence orders to take guns and gun permits from the defendant if the defendant had used a deadly weapon to threaten a child or the person seeking the order, had threatened to seriously injure one of them, had seriously injured them or had threatened suicide.

The bill also would give judges discretion to order guns taken even if none of the four factors applied.

Sgt. John Guard, supervisor of the Domestic Violence Prevention Unit for the Pitt County Sheriff's Department, said judges in Pitt have been requiring law officers to seize firearms in some domestic violence cases for more than six years. No one has been killed with a gun in a domestic violence homicide in the Pitt sheriff's jurisdiction since 1997, he said.

Chief District Court Judge David Leech said in a telephone interview that judges require defendants to surrender guns when "there's a threatened use of firearms alleged in the petition, or where you find from the facts in the petition that the defendant is in possession of the firearms and have reason to think that it is a real and present danger to the victim."

Giving judges more power in such situations was the focus of debate Tuesday in the House Judiciary IV Committee. The committee did not vote on the bill.

Henri McClees, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, said the four defined reasons should be enough.

"When you have a very serious case, you're going to have one of these four factors," she said. "You don't need to give discretion to a judge."

Protective orders are sometimes used in divorce cases, said McClees. "If you have a judge who simply does not like guns, he could use this statute to take away property where guns simply have nothing to do with the complaint," she said.

The gun-rights group Grass Roots North Carolina refers to the bill on its Internet site as a "hidden threat" and asks readers to send legislators e-mail opposing it.

Some of the emotions that infuse discussions about the broader topic of domestic violence ran though the committee debate.

Rep. Beverly Earle objected to McClees' repeated use of the phrase "a serious domestic violence case." Earle said all cases of domestic violence are serious.

Rep. Joe Kiser, a Republican and former sheriff from Lincoln County, had the most critical questions on the bill. He recounted a story from his days as sheriff, when a woman called deputies to her house every month to save her from a violent husband. As deputies led the husband away, his wife would call to him, promising to bail him out.

Kiser also objected to the assumption that all domestic violence victims are women.

"There are two sides to this story," he said. "I had women who beat their husbands and their husbands would not report it."

But it was the families of women killed by their partners who were speaking up for the bill.

Helen Rogers' granddaughter, Cindy Lemons, was shot last year outside the home they shared in Johnston County. She left three young children -- the oldest was then 4. Lemons' estranged boyfriend, Tarvaris Mickens, was charged with first-degree murder. He pleaded not guilty.

Rogers told the committee about her granddaughter's unsuccessful attempt to get a protective order against Mickens the week before her death.

Afterward, she sat in the back of the room, wiping away tears.

"I hope and trust in the law," she said. "That was a lesson for everybody to look at."