The law expands the gun purchase prohibition for people convicted of domestic violence or subject to a restraining order to include dating partners, not just people married to or living with the victim. Reformers applauded this closing of the boyfriend loophole, but the worry is that many criminal history records don’t clarify whether such relationships existed. Some of the families sued in 2018 after the Air Force admitted it had not reported the violent history of the gunman, Devin Kelley, including a 2012 conviction for domestic assault, to the NICS system. A more basic NICS flaw involves simply identifying the prospective gun buyer. I’ll stipulate that for successful purchasers, all traces of the search would need to be destroyed immediately to satisfy privacy concerns.

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