New major change to gun laws could restore gun rights to thousands of criminal convicts

> The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Friday it has proposed a new rule that could grant gun rights to potentially thousands of Americans who are **currently barred** from owning firearms. The proposed rule comes as the administration continues efforts to roll back regulations on guns, including reductions to the National Firearms Act (NFA) tax on certain firearms.

> Several people have already had their gun rights restored under the current administration, including actor Mel Gibson, who was barred due to his misdemeanor domestic violence conviction in 2011. Under federal law, people “convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year,” are ineligible to own a firearm. The DOJ-proposed rule would **create a pathway for individuals with criminal convictions to have their gun rights restored**, with final discretion left to the attorney general on a case-by-case basis.

> Amy Bellantoni, a gun rights attorney said “For decades, the federal Certificate of Relief program once available to individuals who forfeited the loss of their rights to possess firearms and ammunition **as a result of a conviction of a felony or qualifying misdemeanor under federal law** remained unfunded and unavailable. Removing that authority from the ATF and reinstating a path toward **restoration of rights** through the Attorney General’s Office is warranted, commendable, and long overdue.”

> Attorney General Pam Bondi said in the Friday press release: “For too long, countless Americans **with criminal histories** have been permanently disenfranchised from exercising the right to keep and bear arms—a right every bit as constitutionally enshrined as the right to vote, the right to free speech, and the right to free exercise of religion—irrespective of whether they actually pose a threat. No longer.”

If you cannot be trusted to own a gun, then you cannot be trusted to be free and should still be behind bars.