The Second Amendment doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Any infringement on it opens the door to later infringements on other rights, and vice versa. That’s part of what makes the return of gun rights restoration so important in the grand scheme of things. People shouldn’t lose their rights for a lifetime simply because of one misdeed, and while the possibility existed for it before, Leftists did what they could to make it an impossibility.
And other rights need to be restored, as noted over at the Washington Examiner.
Beyond incarceration, a conviction’s fallout strips individuals of the right to vote in many states, closes the door on federal employment and most professional licenses, makes it difficult to find housing and private-sector jobs, bars jury service, and prohibits gun possession for life under federal law and the law of nearly every state.
The new DOJ rule addresses only the last, and even there, the impact is modest. The process lifts only the federal firearms prohibition, not the parallel state ban that exists in every state except Vermont. An analysis found that most state restoration procedures do not apply when the underlying offense is federal. Residents in California, New York, or Illinois can complete DOJ’s process, receive a formal restoration letter, and still face state prosecution the moment they take custody of a firearm. Nonetheless, removing the federal bar reduces exposure to mandatory minimums that state prosecutors cannot match, including a mandatory floor of 15 years for a second federal gun possession conviction.
But relief under this rule, or even a federal pardon, does not erase a conviction from someone’s record, leaving them subject to myriad collateral consequences. The comprehensive solution here is for the federal government to join most states in adopting a general expungement statute. Such a law would allow people with nonviolent federal felony convictions to petition, after a substantial waiting period and with proof of law-abiding conduct, to have their federal records expunged. The eligibility rules can be as tight as those enumerated in DOJ’s rule: nonviolent offenses only, waiting periods, court review, opportunity for prosecutorial objection.
Research shows that after roughly seven years of law-abiding conduct, the arrest risk of someone with a prior conviction approaches the baseline for the general population. Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics data show that 90% of prisoners who used a firearm in their offense obtained it outside the regulated retail system. The channels this rule reopens are not where gun crime originates, and those willing to submit to federal review and prosecutorial objection are self-selecting out of the population inclined to reoffend.
Now, I tend to think that people should get their rights back the moment they complete their sentence. If they’ve paid their debt to society, it’s paid. I don’t want armed, violent felons walking around at the drop of a hat, but that’s because they need to do more serious time than most are doing these days. Once free and clear, that’s different.
But since we’re not going to see that, it’s important to take what we can get.
This op-ed is entitled, “Give Martha Stewart her guns and Steve Bannon his vote: The case for federal expungement,” and expungement is what’s really needed here.
It’s one thing to get one’s gun rights back, or his voting rights returned, and quite another to get a free and clear pass for having cleaned up their lives. Don’t trust them? Then wait the seven years above. Then there’s little chance of them breaking the law. No more than with someone without that history, anyway.
Expunge the records. Give them a chance to really live free and clear. Let them formally put that part of their lives behind them so that they’re not continually punished for something they did nearly a decade earlier and have cleaned up from.
We can’t keep pretending we believe in forgiveness as a people, only to refuse to forgive.
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