April 4, 2018
Page 13
O PINION
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A No-Brainer Way to Bring Gun Deaths Down
Oregon sets
example by
closing loophole
by a niqa
r aihan
It’s now been just over
a month since 17 teenag-
ers were gunned down
at Marjory Stoneman
Douglas High School,
culminating in a march
that brought nearly a million people to the
capital. Yet Congress is still dragging its
feet on guns.
While Republicans and Democrats
gridlocked over the best way to prevent
shootings, the Oregon Legislature took
action to prevent a particularly deadly
form of gun violence — and it didn’t in-
volve arming teachers or outlawing AR-
15s.
Just one day after the devastating Val-
entine’s Day shooting in Florida, the Or-
egon House of Representatives passed a
bill to close what’s called the “boyfriend
loophole” in its gun laws. The new law
will prevent anyone from buying or own-
ing a firearm who’s been convicted of
stalking or domestic violence, as well
as people with active protective orders
against them.
While federal law is already supposed
to prevent gun ownership by domestic
abusers, the law’s outdated definition left
out those who didn’t live with or have
children with their victims — hence, the
boyfriend loophole.
While this news received relatively
little coverage, it’s a huge step forward
and will unquestionably save lives. Over
1,000 women are murdered each year by
current or past husbands or partners —
that’s three women a day or one woman
dead each time you sit down for a meal.
And though the story of the battered wife
is not an unfamiliar one, a recent study at
the University of Pennsylvania found that
over 80 percent of intimate partner vio-
lence incidents reported in 2013 involved
current or past dating partners, while cur-
rent and past spouses accounted for less
than 20 percent of incidents.
As Americans continue to get married
later and less frequently, the nationwide
population of unmarried adults will grow,
which is why closing the boyfriend loop-
hole should be a top priority for lawmak-
ers across the country.
Oregon’s new law makes it the 24th
state to officially close the loophole, but
there’s still much work to be done. The
federal law prohibiting gun ownership for
abusers doesn’t actually outline a mecha-
nism for them to hand over weapons they
already own.
Twenty-seven states require convicted
abusers and those subject to protective or-
ders to relinquish their firearms, but only
half of those specify whom the weapons
should be given to. And just four require
law enforcement to proactively remove
guns from offenders rather than wait for
them to be turned in.
Meanwhile, 13 states have no laws
at all to prevent domestic abusers from
owning or buying new guns. Six of those
states are in the top 10 with the highest
rates of gun deaths.
Reps. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich. and
Dan Donovan, R-N.Y., along with Sen.
Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., have intro-
duced legislation to close the boyfriend
loophole on the federal level. But that
alone won’t be enough to ensure that
abusers don’t have access to deadly fire-
arms.
We need thoroughness and uniformity
across state lines. We need specific sys-
tems to remove weapons from dangerous
people, including laws allowing law en-
forcement to seize weapons found while
responding to reports of intimate partner
violence.
We need legislation requiring law en-
forcement agencies to report offenders for
inclusion in the National Instant Crimi-
nal Background Check System. And, of
course, we need universal background
checks on all gun sales, no matter where
they occur.
Survivors everywhere deserve support,
security, and peace of mind, and it’s long
past time our laws reflect that fact.
Aniqa Raihan is a writer, activist and
community organizer with a focus on vi-
olence against women. She led a move-
ment against campus sexual assault at the
George Washington University. Distribut-
ed by OtherWords.org.
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