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While the bipartisan package is a good first step to closing the boyfriend loophole, Congress still needs to pass legislation barring dating partners subject to final protective orders from having guns, Graber said. Grants should also be made available to states to develop and carry out policies to make sure that abusers covered by the law actually relinquish firearms, she said.
Boy friend free first time.
A bipartisan gun safety bill passed Thursday by the Senate expands federal restrictions on domestic abusers\u2019 ability to own a gun in an effort to close the regulatory gap known as the \u201cboyfriend loophole.\u201d However, experts and advocates point out that the loophole isn\u2019t closed completely.\n\n\n\nUnder current federal law, anyone convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, or subject to a domestic violence protective order, cannot possess a firearm, but only if the offender is a current or former spouse, shares a child with their victim, or has lived with their victim at any point. Other abusive partners are not restricted from gun ownership under the law, a loophole researchers and advocates have been pushing lawmakers to fix for years. \n\n\n\nAlthough Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a lead Democrat negotiator for the gun package, has stated that the bill closes the boyfriend loophole, experts told The 19th that Congress\u2019 proposal doesn\u2019t go far enough to protect women in abusive relationships.\n\n\n\nThe stakes are high: At least half of women homicide victims are killed by intimate partners. \n\n\n\nUnder the bill, which passed the Senate by a 65-33 vote late Thursday and now heads to the House, being in a \u201ccurrent or recent former dating relationship\u201d with a victim would be enough to bar a convicted abuser from possessing a gun. However, for first-time offenders, the legislation would waive this restriction for dating partners after five years if they are not convicted of another misdemeanor.\n\n\n\nAdditionally, the current bill does not apply to abusers subject to final protective orders, which are granted to abuse victims after a court hearing and can last for at least a year.\n\n\n\nA congressional aide for Murphy said that while the senator has been clear throughout the negotiation process that the bill is not perfect, he still believes it will save lives. When asked about the current version of the bill only partially closing the loophole, the aide reiterated that the bill is a compromise that does not accomplish all of the Democrats\u2019 goals on gun legislation.\n\n\n\nSen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, has worked for years to pass gun control legislation. (Anna Moneymaker\/Getty Images) (Anna Moneymaker\/Getty Images)\n\n\n\nKelly Drane, research director at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said that while the bill \u201cis a huge step forward\u201d that would still increase safety for victims, its limitations are somewhat disappointing. \n\n\n\nOnly covering \u201crecent former\u201d partners would not cover abusive partners who can still cause harm after the relationship has ended, she said. \n\n\n\nAdditionally, while the bill expands the definition of who could qualify as a convicted perpetrator of domestic violence, it does not reference abusers who are subject to protective orders or add dating partners to the definition of an intimate partner. That additional expansion for intimate partners would be necessary to fully close the loophole, since the Senate\u2019s proposed bill would alter how dating relationships are defined in a different subsection of the federal criminal code \u2014 while the legal determination of an intimate partner that protection orders rely on would remain unchanged. \n\n\n\nThis would allow abusive dating partners subject to such orders to still have firearm access, experts said. \n\n\n\n\u201cIt is important to note that this bill will only partially close the boyfriend loophole,\u201d Drane said. \n\n\n\nAllowing abusers served with full protective orders to still access firearms leaves \u201ca pretty gigantic loophole\u201d in the law, said Rachel Graber, director of public policy at the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Such orders are issued when a court has found a survivor to be in immediate danger..\n\n\n\n\u201cI think there\u2019s a sense among some people that protective orders are not that serious, and that\u2019s not the case at all. They\u2019re very serious. And they\u2019re issued basically to prevent irreparable damage. To prevent people being severely injured or killed,\u201d she said. \n\n\n\nMurphy\u2019s office said that, moving forward, the senator wants to work towards expanding weapons restrictions to abusers subject to such protection orders.\n\n\n\n\n\nChristina Dardis, an assistant professor at Towson University who specializes in interpersonal violence, agreed that the bill is a step forward. Still, she warned that the \u201cseeming arbitrariness\u201d of that five-year timeline presents a new loophole, since the same restoration is not offered to current or former spouses or abusers who share a child with their victim. \n\n\n\nMurphy\u2019s aide said that the goal of this provision was to narrowly restore Second Amendment rights to a specific category of abusers \u2014 not to current or former spouses, or other groups already subject to the law.\n\n\n\nThe five-year requirement may also place a greater burden on survivors of intimate violence, Dardis said, if they go to court or press further charges in an attempt to extend weapons\u2019 restrictions \u2014 a fight that former spouses would not have to go through. \n\n\n\n\u201cThe bottom line is that the legal status of your relationship is still allowed to determine your level of safety from your former abuser, and there remains an arbitrary dividing line between former dating partners and former spouses of who is, and is not, permitted lasting protection against their perpetrators\u2019 firearm ownership,\u201d Dardis wrote over email. \n\n\n\nHowever, in Drane\u2019s view, more research is needed to understand the consequences of the five year restoration period in the bill \u2014 especially since the risk of someone committing future crimes may decrease the longer that person goes without doing so. \n\n\n\nSeveral studies have shown that domestic abuse victims who face gun violence are experiencing heightened physical and emotional stress, even compared to those assaulted with other weapons such as knives, said T.K. Logan, a professor at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine who researches trauma and interpersonal violence.\n\n\n\nWhen the threat of gun violence is added into an abusive relationship, that threat just deepens the harm the victim faces, Logan said. \n\n\n\n\u201cGuns are deadly, right? We all know that. So it\u2019s just a different level of threat,\u201d she said. \n\n\n\nHer recent study found that, within a small sample of mostly White college-educated women, there was no significant difference in the firearm threats faced by women who lived with their abusive partners versus those who didn\u2019t. \n\n\n\nWomen in both groups said their abusive partners, predominantly men, threatened to shoot them or someone they knew, used weapons other than guns to hurt them or sexually assaulted them. At nearly the same rate, both groups said the gun threats made them less likely to talk to police. The only real difference: Women not living with their abusive partners aren\u2019t protected the same way under federal law. \n\n\n\n\n\nHow courts may interpret the definition of a dating relationship as laid out in the bill, if it gets passed into law, worries Dardis. \n\n\n\nThe length and nature of the relationship between victim and abuser, as well as the frequency and type of interaction, will determine whether it can be considered a dating relationship protected under the proposed law. \n\n\n\nA court may decide that a dating relationship would not apply to weapons restrictions if it appears too brief, not recent enough, or if there was not enough interaction between partners, she said. \n\n\n\n\u201cWe know that the process of separation from abusive relationships can take a great deal of time, and that stalking and violence, can, in some cases persist even for years after relationships end, so it is concerning that relationships that were not \u2018recent\u2019 enough, in the eyes of the court, would not be covered by this law,\u201d she said over email. \n\n\n\nThe bill\u2019s passage in the Senate meant that its supporters had cleared another hurdle needed to pass the legislation before Congress\u2019 scheduled two-week Independence Day recess. The legislation is on track to be taken up by the House on Friday. \n\n\n\nThe fight for any recent federal gun control legislation has largely faced stiff opposition. This week\u2019s proposal was put together in response to the massacre last month of 19 students and 2 teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas \u2014 the second-deadliest mass shooting at an elementary school in the nation\u2019s history. Still, Republicans in the House have voiced opposition to the bill, and it could still be amended or have language struck from it through the consideration process. Past efforts to close the loophole have failed, most recently during the push to renew the Violence Against Women Act.\n\n\n\nSen. Amy Klobuchar, who introduced legislation in 2013 to close the boyfriend loophole and has since reintroduced the bill several times, told The 19th prior to the bill text being released that tackling the issue is still crucial, despite years of roadblocks. \n\n\n\n\u201cIt just keeps getting shoved aside, honestly,\u201d she said.\n\n\n\nWhile the bipartisan package is a good first step to closing the boyfriend loophole, Congress still needs to pass legislation barring dating partners subject to final protective orders from having guns, Graber said. Grants should also be made available to states to develop and carry out policies to make sure that abusers covered by the law actually relinquish firearms, she said. \n\n\n\nThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found, year after year, that half of female homicide victims are killed by a current or former intimate partner. That trend continues in 2019 data from the agency\u2019s latest violent deaths report. \n\n\n\nWhile federal law currently only affords protections to certain types of relationships, research shows that the risks of domestic abuse are not so rigidly defined to married couples or couples that have children together. \n\n\n\nThe Giffords Law Center has tracked 28 states, plus Washington, D.C., that have passed legislation to partially or completely close the boyfriend loophole. To Drane, completely closing the loophole is necessary to protect women in violent relationships that have the potential to turn deadly \u2014 especially when many women don\u2019t want to get married quickly or at all. \n\n\n\n\u201cThis updates our laws to be more congruent with what intimate partner relationships look like today,\u201d she said.\n","post_title":"Bipartisan gun violence bill tightens the \u2018boyfriend loophole\u2019 \u2014 but doesn\u2019t close it completely","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"gun-bill-boyfriend-loophole","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2022-06-23 22:02:57","post_modified_gmt":"2022-06-24 03:02:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/19thnews.org\/?p=41242","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},"authors":["name":"Orion Rummler","slug":"orion-rummler","taxonomy":"author","description":"Orion Rummler is our LGBTQ+ reporter\u00a0focusing on state politics, breaking news and the underreported ways that trans and queer people are marginalized. He previously covered breaking news for Axios and contributed research to \u201cAxios on HBO.\u201d ","parent":0,"count":123,"filter":"raw","link":"https:\/\/19thnews.org\/author\/orion-rummler"]} Up Next Education 2ff7e9595c
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