Bipartisan gun law has more for victims of abuse

One provision finally addresses ‘boyfriend loophole’ to protect unmarried partners.

WASHINGTON — Nikiesha Thomas was on her way to work one day when she told her sister she was thinking about getting involved in domestic violence prevention.

The words gave Keeda Simpson pause. Her younger sister had never mentioned anything like that, and she was bringing it up in a phone call just days after filing for a protective order against her ex-boyfriend.

It was their last conversation.

Less than an hour later, Thomas’ ex-boyfriend approached her parked car in a southeastern neighborhood of the nation’s capital and shot through her passenger window, killing the 33-yearold.

It’s cases like hers, where warning signs and legal paperwork weren’t enough to save a life, that lawmakers had in mind this summer when they crafted the first major bipartisan law on gun violence in decades.

The measure, signed by President 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.

The law includes tougher background checks for the youngest gun buyers and help for states to enact “red f lag ” laws that make it easier for authorities to take weapons from people who show signs of being dangerous.

The law also has a provision to make it harder for convicted domestic abusers to get firearms, even when they are not married to or do not have children with their victims.

Nearly a decade in the making, lawmakers’ move to close the “boyfriend loophole” received far less attention than other aspects of the legislation. But advocates and lawmakers hope this provision will save lives and become a major part of the law’s legacy.

“We have so many women killed — one every 14 hours, from domestic partners with guns in this country,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (DMinn.), an advocate for the proposal, said before the bill’s passage. “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.”

Federal law has long barred people convicted of domestic violence or under domestic violence restraining orders from buying guns. But that restriction only applied to those who were married to, lived with or had a child with the victim. As a result, it missed a whole group of perpetrators — current and former romantic or intimate partners — sometimes with fatal consequences.

At least 19 states and the District of Columbia have taken action on this issue, according to data compiled by Everytown for Gun Safety. Klobuchar and domestic violence advocates had worked for years to do the same on the federal level.

The struggle over defining a boyfriend complicated the effort to the end. Negotiations in Congress nearly broke down over the provision. The same happened in March, when a bipartisan effort to reauthorize a 1990s law that extended protections to victims of domestic and sexual violence passed only after Democrats removed the “boyfriend loophole” to ensure Republican support.

“That was the toughest issue in our negotiations,” Sen. Christopher S. Murphy (D-Conn.), a lead negotiator of the gun package, said of closing the loophole. “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.”

Murphy and other Democratic negotiators were able to persuade Republicans by including a narrow path to restoring firearms access for first-time offenders after five years if they are not convicted of another misdemeanor or violent crime. For married couples and those who have a child together, the ban is permanent.

Some advocates say more change is still needed. The legislation only partially closes the loophole because dating partners subject to a domestic violence restraining order, as in Thomas’ exboyfriend’s case, are still able to obtain firearms.

“It will for sure save lives. But also to be clear, this is a partial closure of what’s known as the boyfriend loophole. There’s still a lot of work to be done,” said Jennifer Becker, legal director and senior attorney for Legal Momentum, a legal defense and education fund for women.

Federal crime data for 2020 showed that in murders involving intimate partners — including divorced and gay couples — girlfriends accounted for 37% of victims, and wives for 34%. Only 13% of the victims were boyfriends, and 7% were husbands.

In 2018, researchers found that from 1980 to 2013, intimate partner homicides in 45 states dropped by 13% when firearm prohibitions linked to domestic restraining orders included people who were dating.

“It suggests that when you cast that wider net, by covering boyfriends, you are able to cover people who are more dangerous and potentially save more lives,” said April Zeoli, a researcher at the University of Michigan who took part in the study.

Thomas’ family hopes the changes in the law will save lives and ensure her death wasn’t in vain. They say she was doing everything she could to protect herself when she left her years-long relationship with 36-year-old Antoine Oliver in late September 2021.

It was only after her death in October that her family found out that the protective order she had filed three days earlier, detailing how her former partner had access to firearms and how she felt unsafe, was never served. Sheriff ’s deputies in Prince George’s County, Md., where Oliver lived, had been trying to reach him by phone.

When law enforcement finally reached him, he told them he would come to accept service of the order the next day. Instead, authorities said, he killed Thomas and then fatally shot himself.

“Some days I just sit and review the paper she had filed with the court just a few days prior, and just think, what else could she have done to protect herself?” said Nadine Thomas, her mother. Gilbert Thomas, her father, said his daughter did everything she was supposed to do, but the system failed her.

“She feared for her life, and what did the police do? They called him and made arrangements for him to come to pick up the order,” he said. “There was no urgency placed on it.”

Now the family is bracing for the anniversary of Thomas’ killing. The weight of grief is heavy, particularly for her 11-year-old daughter, Kylei, whom Thomas had before she met Oliver.

In the months before her death, Thomas had been planning to buy a home for herself and her daughter. She was saving up from her job with the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education, where she was assigned to an intervention program to help some of the most challenged students.

“We really were starting to map out some things, and it just got taken away,” Simpson, said. “One of the last things we talked about was her wanting to evoke change for other women.”

“I’m going to do whatever it takes — even if it’s a small thing — to help someone else that’s in her situation, not to lose their life,” she added.