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DOJ ADOPTS FINAL GUN RIGHTS RESTORATION RULE
The Dept of Justice last week published a final rule adopting a procedure for restoring gun rights for people convicted of certain nonviolent felonies.
It’s a victory for the government’s goal of being the gatekeeper on 2nd Amendment rights. It’s a loser for everyone else.
The process will be restrictive and vigorous, coming with a long list of “presumptive disqualifiers.” Those include a conviction at any time in the past for a host of crimes of violence, for brandishing a gun, for witness tampering, or if you’re subject to sex offender registration (to name just a few). There is a 10-year wait for people convicted of drug offense or prior misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence. Gun rights won’t be restored if your conviction is less than five years old or you’re still locked up or on supervised release.
The application requires copies of prior criminal judgments, indictments, plea agreements and a state criminal history for the past 25 years. You must provide contact information for three character references, none of whom is prohibited from possessing a gun. Finally, you have to submit electronic fingerprints.
The program will be run by the Office of Pardon Attorney, a fact which does not provide comfort that decisions on gun rights – given that OPA as recently as July 1st had a 20,000-document backlog of petitions for clemency – will be made quickly.
A curious and not-very-promising provision of the program is that it will be open on September 25 for six weeks only to “invited candidates.” No one seems to have explored who the “invited candidates” might be, but given the Administration’s track record of favoring people with money, celebrity status and connections, the chance that the program may be flooded with favored applicants is real. Mel Gibson got his rights back, but there are plenty of MAGA-loving people with money or status in line behind him.
On November 4, the program will open to the public for 5,000 candidates. On January 4, 2027, the process will open to additional candidates, with a $30 processing fee required for the first time.
If your application is denied, you will have the right of judicial review.
Associated Press hopefully reported that the program is a victory for Second Amendment advocates who have long pushed for nonviolent people with felony convictions to be given a pathway to regain their legal right to own firearms.” It quoted Blanche as saying, “The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and the federal government should not permanently deprive Americans of a constitutional right without regard to whether they pose a danger to public safety,” Blanche said in a statement. The attorney general said the new process will protect “public safety while giving deserving Americans a real path to restoration.”
However, the program may be a fig leaf that lets the Administration avoid a Supreme Court showdown over the 2ndAmendment and 18 USC 922(g) while deciding for itself whose 2nd Amendment rights will be honored and whose will be ignored. If § 922(g)(1) is unconstitutional as applied to some people despite their convictions, setting up a discretionary government process whereby the unconstitutionality may be corrected in the future is hardly comforting. The government may as well set up a panel to decide that you can exercise your 1st Amendment rights to make statements or publish flyers after you submit to a bureaucratic review process.
If a conviction is insufficient to strip 2nd Amendment rights from the start, an argument that you should be convicted of a § 922(g)(1) offense anyway because you didn’t petition the government to give you what you always were constitutionally entitled to is scary.
Look at Ray Luna.
Ray was convicted of a drug possession felony. Much later, he was caught with a gun and charged as an 18 USC § 922(g) felon in possession. The District Court dismissed the indictment, holding that disarmament over a mere possession conviction – even a felony one z– violated Ray’s 2nd Amendment rights.
The government – the same government that will grant or deny you your 2nd Amendment rights – appealed to the 5th Circuit, arguing that it had information that Ray had really been trafficking drugs, despite the fact that he had not been charged with or convicted of that. Even if he had not, the US Attorney contended, drug possession was analogous to colonial-era laws regulating trafficking in tobacco. This week, the 5th agreed with the District Court and threw out the indictment:
[W]e consider only whether Luna’s predicate felony supports disarmament… For the purposes of assessing [a defendant’s] predicate offenses under § 922(g)(1), we may consider prior convictions that are ‘punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year… Against the government’s request to ‘account [for] [the defendant’s] entire record, which is necessary to properly assess the extent of his violent conduct,’ we reject such an invitation and instead confine our inquiry to [the defendant’s prior] conviction—the only predicate § 922(g)(1) offense—based on the rule of orderliness.
Calvin, remember that time you laid out Susie Derkins with the snowball when you were both in 1st grade? If you’re convicted of a nonviolent white-collar crime 40 years in the future, you can bet the DOJ will resurrect the Derkins incident as proof that you should be denied possession of grandpa’s antique .22.
Some 2nd Amendment protection: Sending the foxes to guard the 2nd Amendment henhouse.
Federal Register, Application for Relief From Disabilities Imposed by Federal Laws With Respect to the Acquisition, Receipt, Transfer, Shipment, Transportation, or Possession of Firearms (August 20, 2026)
Associated Press, Justice Department creates a new pathway to restore gun rights for some convicted of felonies (August 17, 2026)
United States v. Luna, Case No. 25-40272, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 25846 (5th Cir. Aug. 24, 2026)
~ Thomas L. Root
