Pam Bondi Aims To Revive a Moribund Legal Process for Restoring Gun Rights
A new Justice Department rule could help "prohibited persons" who pose no threat to public safety.
Although President Donald Trump has been entrusted with control of the nation's vast military might, including its nuclear weapons, he is not allowed to own a gun. He lost that right as a result of 34 state felony convictions involving falsification of business records. Whatever you think of the legally dubious case underlying those convictions, this situation makes no sense as a matter of public safety. It epitomizes the absurdly broad criteria that bar Americans from possessing firearms under federal law.
Attorney General Pam Bondi recently took an important step toward addressing the unjust, constitutionally dubious burdens imposed by that policy. An interim final rule that took effect last week aims to revive the moribund legal process for restoring the Second Amendment rights of "prohibited persons" who pose no threat to public safety. The rule rescinds the delegation of that process to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), which Congress has long prohibited from accepting applications for relief.
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Under 18 USC 925(c), someone who loses his gun rights can ask the attorney general to restore them. The attorney general has the discretion to do that based on a determination that "the circumstances regarding the disability, and the applicant's record and reputation, are such that the applicant will not be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety and that the granting of the relief would not be contrary to the public interest." But that responsibility historically has been delegated to the ATF, which Congress has barred from considering such applications.
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The upshot was a 1992 spending rider, renewed every year since then, that says "none of the funds appropriated" for the ATF "shall be available to investigate or act upon applications for relief from Federal firearms disabilities" under Section 935(c). Because of that rider, prohibited persons had no recourse unless they managed to obtain a pardon that restored their gun rights. Congress purported to offer a remedy but then made it impossible to obtain.
"This confusing state of affairs has taken on greater significance given developments in Second Amendment jurisprudence since 1992," Bondi's rule notes. To start over with "a clean slate," her rule rescinds the delegation of Section 935(c) authority to the ATF and withdraws "the moribund regulations governing individual applications" to that agency. Bondi says reasserting the attorney general's authority to implement Section 935(c) is consistent with Trump's February 6 executive order "protecting Second Amendment rights," which instructed her to "examine all orders, regulations, guidance, plans, international agreements, and other actions of executive departments and agencies" to "assess any ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens."
Slick move...
