For thirty years, Congress built a door and the federal government just wouldn’t put the handle on.
That’s essentially what happened with 18 U.S.C. § 925(c). Congress wrote a law saying certain Americans who’d lost their gun rights could apply to get them back. The Attorney General was supposed to review each case, look at the person’s record, and decide whether they were still a danger. Simple enough. A legal pathway, individualized review, common sense.
And then for three decades, the process was “effectively unavailable.” That’s the phrase in the Justice Department’s own press release. Effectively unavailable. Translation: we could have done this, the law told us to do this, and we just didn’t.
Bless their hearts.
So here comes Attorney General Todd Blanche, one of his first acts on the job, and he finalizes a regulation that actually makes the thing work. A real process. An application. A review. A decision. The kind of thing that should have been running since the Clinton administration.
Now, I know what the hand-wringers are already screaming. “They’re handing guns to criminals!” No, hon. They’re not. The rule keeps strong presumptions against relief for violent felons, registered sex offenders, illegal aliens, and anyone who still presents a danger. You have to prove to the Attorney General’s satisfaction that you’re not likely to hurt anybody. It’s not automatic. It’s not guaranteed. It’s individualized, case by case, the way Congress intended.
What it does do is give a path back for the guy who made a mistake twenty years ago, cleaned up his life, raised a family, and still can’t so much as hold his daddy’s hunting rifle because of a federal disability that follows him around like a ghost. Thirty million Americans are in that boat. Thirty million.
U.S. Pardon Attorney Edward Martin called it “unprecedented restoration of firearms rights to millions of Americans.” He’s right, and it’s about time.
Here’s what gets me. The same crowd that lectures us about “second chances” and “rehabilitation” and “redemption” when it suits their agenda suddenly goes quiet when the second chance involves a constitutional right they don’t particularly like. The Second Amendment isn’t the redheaded stepchild of the Bill of Rights, no matter how hard certain people wish it were. Blanche said it plain: “The Second Amendment is not a second-class right.”
You’d think that wouldn’t need saying. You’d be wrong.
The rule takes effect thirty days after it hits the Federal Register, and it only lifts federal restrictions. State law still applies. So if your state says no