This week, the Associated Press published something of a celebratory review of the new gun control law signed by President Joe Biden in June under the byline of Farnoush Amiri. The piece starts with a story about Nikiesha Thomas of Washington, a woman who expressed to her sister a desire to do some volunteer work aimed at preventing domestic violence. She said that only days after filing for a restraining order against her boyfriend. A few hours later, the ex-boyfriend in question shot her to death in her car.
It’s the kind of story you would want to feature when singing the praise of a new gun control law. This is particularly true because the law passed in June contained provisions to expand so-called “red flag” laws and at least partially closed what has been called the “boyfriend loophole.” Up until now, these red flag laws could be invoked in cases of domestic violence, but only if the accused and the victim were married, living together, or had a child together. Boyfriends didn’t count. The AP’s take on this is that expanding the scope of who can be hit with a red flag will save more women from being killed by deranged boyfriends. Here’s a short bit of that analysis:
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.
The package included tougher background checks for the youngest gun buyers and help for states to put in place “red flag” laws that make it easier for authorities to take weapons from people adjudged dangerous.
Also tucked into the bill was a proposal that will make it more difficult for a convicted domestic abuser to obtain firearms even when the abuser is not married to or doesn’t have a child with the victim.
Just to establish this up front and not make this piece overly wordy, I’m describing these scenarios in terms of the woman being the victim and the man being the aggressor. That’s because it’s almost always that way, at least in straight relationships, though there are exceptions and this argument can be applied to any combination of genders.
Even I will admit that you can craft a fairly compelling argument for closing the boyfriend loophole when it’s put in this context. Who would possibly support the idea of more women being killed by homicidal boyfriends? But let’s keep in mind that Nikiesha Thomas had taken all of the appropriate steps in her situation. She’d obtained a restraining order and not sought contact with the boyfriend. But she was also dealing with a clearly violent person who didn’t pay any attention to that piece of paper. He was obviously a significant danger to her, but nobody learned that until after she was dead.
The problem with this argument is that it fails to take into account how many women out there get into rocky relationships with boyfriends who are not like Ms. Thomas’ former lover. Sometimes people get into fights and make up. Others break up with no violence other than some shouting or crying. And it’s a safe wager that those people vastly outnumber the ones who will go fetch a firearm and execute their ex.
This leaves us with the question of whether or not a law is fair when it has the potential to possibly protect a subset of people while opening the door to flagrant abuse against a vastly larger number of citizens. What sort of price is acceptable when deciding on such a course? How many people who would likely go through their entire lives without once pointing a firearm at an innocent person should have their rights suspended and be put through the legal grindstone of being tagged under a red flag order?
Limiting who can make such a claim to those in provable, established relationships reduces the likelihood of false claims being filed. If you are married, cohabitating, or have a child with the other person, that can all be documented easily. Removing those limits opens the door to all manner of unpleasantness and the results can be serious. Anyone who has spent any time out in the real world, particularly on the dating scene could tell you this.
With the boyfriend clause in place, a woman can drop a dime on anyone she’s ever met at a bar because she’s angry that they didn’t hit it off. If she has some other ax to grind with someone she’s never even dated, she can arrange to be in the same place at the same time where people will see them and then claim they’d been dating. Would the majority of women stoop to that level? Obviously not. Have you personally known someone over the course of your life who would do it? I’m willing to bet your answer is yes if you’re above a certain age.
If the scenario I described above does wind up playing out, you now have a person who may have never lifted a finger in anger against the woman filing the complaint, but his firearms wind up in a locker at the police station and his name shows up in the local newspaper. He had to beseech a judge to reconsider and hope to be “forgiven” so he can reestablish his constitutional rights. We’ve already seen too many horror stories demonstrating how that process can drag out for months if not years.
I’m not saying I have all of the answers here. We can’t just wave away the number of women who are killed each year by psychotic boyfriends. But if we’re planning on establishing some sort of blanket protection against such an outcome, we should at least be aware of the price tag it will bring. And the other sad reality is that a psychotic boyfriend without a firearm can still show up with a knife or a baseball bat and the outcome may be the same. None of this is cut and dried, and all of this should be considered before the states all begin rushing into these uncharted waters.
