After the Senate passed a bipartisan gun bill, Rep. Cori (D-Missouri), shared a heartbreaking story about her experience with gun violence in abusive relationships.
“I was ~20 years old when I found myself in a relationship with an abusive partner,” Bush wrote at the beginning of a threadTwitter. “I knew that he had guns. One was in the kitchen cabinet, the other was between our pillows at night. I didn’t believe he would actually light at me. Until he did.”
Bush continued, claiming that her abuser became angry with her while she was cooking and started hitting her. As she ran away, she wondered why he wasn’t chasing her until she heard gunshots, she said.
“I did not know that they were aimed at me until they started whizzing past my head,” she wrote. “That moment. The horror of that moment will stay with me forever. The moment when gun violence strikes is deeply traumatic and completely preventable.”
The Missouri progressive ended by praising senators who passed a bill to close the so-called boyfriend gap, which allows domestic abusers the right to purchase a gun provided they have never lived with, married to, or had children with the person they abused.
“Closing the boyfriend loophole could have saved me from a lethal environment,” she said. “As a survivor, I’m glad to see this provision included in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. Closing the boyfriend loophole will save lives.”
If the bill is approved, it will become law. expand the definition of a domestic abuser to include people found guilty of domestic abuse who fall outside of those parameters, though it will still allow people convicted of abuse-related misdemeanors to buy a gun after five years, as long as they haven’t been convicted of any other violent crimes.
Advocates against domestic abuse have been working for yearsTo close the boyfriend loophole which disproportionately allows gun violence against women. Hundreds of womenEach year, 7 in 10 women are killed by their current or former partners.
The Senate bill, which passed 64 votes to 34 on Tuesday, now goes the House where lawmakers areIt was expected to be passed quickly. The bill includes provisions that would eventually limit the number guns owned by the public. These include expanded background checks and restrictions on the sale of guns to anyone under 21.
While measures like closing the boyfriend loophole are celebrated, gun control advocates as well as progressive lawmakers are not. Have been criticizedThe legislation to take steps to increase criminalization by a provision to reduce gun trafficking. Opponents say this would strengthen the criminal legal system and give the enforcement mechanism to untrustworthy police departments.
“If we’re talking about just using this as an excuse to dramatically increase an enforcement mechanism that we know is not capable, right now, of preventing mass shootings, then I’m not really interested in doing something for show for the American public,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) said last week when an outline of the bill first came out.
Advocates also object to several provisions in the bill they claim distract from the root causes of gun violence. misogyny, far rightIdeologies and the multibillion dollar gun industryTheir deep-pocketed lobbyists. Instead, they say, the bill helps to pin the U.S.’s gun violence epidemic on issues like mental health or the amount of doors in schools.
