When people are convicted of a felony or any charge of domestic violence, they lose their gun rights. It’s not the only right felons lose, of course, but it’s one of them.
Over time, they can get the rest of their rights restored. They can go through a process and show the court they deserve those rights back.
Gun rights are different. Those aren’t restored. Legally, there’s always been a process for that, but anti-gunners in Congress defunded it in every budget for decades. The ATF had the authority to restore people’s gun rights, just not the ability to do it.
That changed this year when Attorney General Pam Bondi stepped in and announced she was pulling the authority back to the Department of Justice. The law hadn’t vested the authority in the ATF; the DOJ had, and what the DOJ gives, it can take away without Congress.
And it seems the move had a surprising response among Democrats, who generally tend to be pretty anti-gun.
Last February, President Donald Trump ordered a review of federal gun policy. One of the first proposals to come from that review was a proposed rulemaking to let DOJ use 18 USC § 925 to restore gun rights, essentially waiving 18 USC § 922(g) for those people. The initial recipient of this administrative grace, even before the rulemaking began, was actor and Trump supporter Mel Gibson, disqualified from gun possession by a prior domestic violence conviction.
In the comment period just ended, 16 Democratic state attorneys general – including those representing liberal bastions like California, Hawaii, Illinois, Connecticut and New Jersey – submitted a letter supporting the proposal (subject to what The Reload called “numerous caveats… intended to ensure that no one truly dangerous is able to make it through the process”). But their letter was surprisingly sympathetic to the resurrection of the process.
“While there is no constitutional requirement that mandates any particular form of firearms rights restoration by states or the federal government, as a policy matter, we believe that our residents’ lives should not be defined by the worst mistakes of their pasts,” the letter said.
While I’m not in agreement with them on the proposed guardrails, the fact that so many attorneys general from a party that celebrates gun control is an interesting development that, while not necessarily new, is still surprising these many days later.
But the Democrats aren’t exactly presenting a united front on this.
On the other hand, six Democratic senators and representatives filed comments arguing that the proposed rule is an unlawful exercise of executive power being done to “help violent criminals regain firearms.”
“Given the pervasiveness of gun violence in our nation, this Administration should not be circumventing Congress’s authority to prioritize restoring firearm privileges to individuals convicted of serious or violent crimes,” the Congressional letter said. “Our country is plagued by an epidemic of gun violence.”
Of course, these six lawmakers completely ignore that felons are barred from owning guns, and yet many of those–the same people who would most likely be rejected for having their gun rights restored, in fact–are still getting guns and committing crimes anyway. I mean, if they’re going to go back to their old ways, why would they bother getting their rights restored in the first place? They wouldn’t need to if crime were the goal, as we plainly see in every American city.
It’s suggested that the problem here isn’t what’s being done so much as which administration is doing it.
The attorneys general are at least showing some degree of consistency with how their party tends to view convicted felons. They often take the approach of wanting their rights to be restored as quickly as possible. In fact, some Democrats have even proposed allowing felons who are still in prison to vote.
While their caveats show they’re not fully consistent with rights being regained once someone is out of prison, there’s still some consistency overall.
The six lawmakers in Congress, however, are probably more opposed to this simply because Donald Trump is president. Had Joe Biden taken this step, they likely would have remained silent at most and probably are more likely to have celebrated the move.
At the state level, opposition to President Trump’s every move might be present, but not as all-consuming as it is for members of Congress.
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