Committing a serious crime shouldn’t mean you automatically lose your gun rights for life, Attorney General Todd Blanche said Monday as he finalized a new process to let convicts apply to have their Second Amendment rights restored.
Those who apply will need to have completed their sentences years before they can seek to get their gun rights back. Lower crimes will have a five-year waiting period, while more serious ones will be subject to at least a 10-year wait.
And restoration won’t be automatic. The Justice Department said applications will be judged on a case-by-case basis, with a focus on someone’s original run-in with the law and their subsequent behavior. More serious crimes, such as violent felonies and sex offenses, will still have a presumption against restoration.
But Mr. Blanche said there needs to be a way to prevent a blanket denial of rights to millions of people.
“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,” he said.
Edward Martin, the U.S. pardon attorney, said some 30 million Americans have lost their right to arms.
“President Trump keeps making history — this time by his unprecedented restoration of firearms rights to millions of Americans,” he said.
The rule responds to a growing debate among judges over Congress’s current laws prohibiting certain people from possessing firearms.
The chief law bars felons, fugitives, illegal immigrants and some temporary migrants, those dishonorably discharged from the military, those facing domestic violence protection orders and unlawful drug users, among other categories.
The Supreme Court, in a ruling in June, backed an occasional marijuana user, saying the government went too far in prosecuting him as a habitual drug addict who faced a lifetime ban.
The National Rifle Institute cheered Mr. Blanche’s move.
“NRA has long championed full restoration of Second Amendment rights for individuals who paid their debts to society and who are not demonstrably dangerous to public safety,” said John Commerford, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action.
