Closing the “boyfriend loophole” received far less attention than other aspects of this year's gun legislation. But proponents are hopeful this provision will save lives and become a major part of the law’s legacy.
Nikiesha Thomas' sister Keeda Simpson wears a T-shirt with an image of her sister as she hands out donated school supplied during a Back To School Block Party in the Robinwood Community of Annapolis, Md., Sunday, Aug. 21, 2022. The block party was hosted by Beacon Light Seventh-day Adventist Church, and sponsored by the Nikiesha Thomas Memorial and Allstate Insurance. Nikiesha Thomas was shot and killed by her ex-boy boyfriend just days after filing for a protective order.
The measure signed by President Joe Biden in June was part of a response to a harrowing string of shootings over the summer, including the slaying of 19 children at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. “We have so many women killed — one every 14 hours, from domestic partners with guns in this country,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., a longtime advocate for the proposal, said before passage of the bill in June. “Sadly, half of those involve dating partners, people who aren’t married to someone, but they are in a romantic relationship with them in some way.”
“That was the toughest issue in our negotiations,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a lead negotiator of the gun package, said of the loophole proposal. “The biggest discussion that took us a long time at the end was around the question of how you would get your rights back after you had been prohibited.”
Federal crime data for 2020 showed that out of all murder victims among intimate partners — including divorced and gay couples — girlfriends accounted for 37%, while wives accounted for 34%. Only 13% of the victims were boyfriends, and 7% were husbands. It was only after her death in October that her family members found out that the protective order Thomas had filed three days earlier, detailing how her former partner had access to firearms and she felt unsafe, was never served. Sheriff’s deputies in Prince George’s County, Maryland, where Thomas and Oliver lived, had been trying to reach him by phone.
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