The NYPD has said it's revoking former President Donald Trump's concealed carry permit. The reason is simple. As of right now, Trump is a convicted felon and convicted felons can't own guns. No guns, no need for a carry permit.
Yet there's an underlying problem here, one that Trump's trials and tribulations are highlighting. Namely the issue of non-violent felons being stripped of their gun rights.
Which brings me back to the carry permit ordeal.
It seems that if the NYPD follows through, Trump has an organization that's willing to step in and help defend him in court. And not just over the carry permit, either.
A Second Amendment group is vowing to sue the New York Police Department in an effort to defend former President Donald Trump's concealed carry license after his felony conviction in the hush money trial.
The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb said in a press release on June 6 that the group is willing to "challenge the law" to defend Trump's ownership of firearms.
"If Donald Trump is further prosecuted for owning firearms," Gottlieb said, "we will offer to defend him and challenge the law."
The group's promise to take on the New York court system came despite the state's law mandating that convicted felons are not allowed to have firearm permits.
Possession of a firearm by a convicted felon is a federal crime.
SAF said their organization's position has always been that, "someone should not lose his or her gun rights due to a conviction of a non-violent crime."
Trump's concealed carry license was first revoked in April 2023 when he was indicted for the hush money trial in New York.
That's been the SAF's position, but Trump is highlighting the issue pretty clearly. There are a lot of people who never thought much about it until it came up here and now with the former president.
But it's been an issue for far too long.
The truth of the matter is that non-violent felons might have a similar recidivism rate as violent felons, but their crimes tend to remain non-violent. People like that having a gun isn't an issue and it never was. They're not the people shooting up neighborhoods and killing innocent people because someone didn't say hello to them.
People who commit such felonies deserve to be punished, but I've never understood this idea that you've paid your debt to society when you're released from prison, but you're still punished for the rest of your life, sometimes over a single mistake. It's idiotic.
And a lot of people never even thought about it, despite considering themselves pretty pro-Second Amendment.
Trump has made these people think about it long and hard.
I sincerely hope that Trump takes the SAF up on their offer because this needed to end a long time ago. It's possible that somehow Rahimi might make the issue moot, but I'm not holding out a lot of hope there--and that's assuming we get a decision on Rahimi anytime in the next few years at this rate.
Ironically, I think the effort to continue punishing felons long after they get out of prison is what drives many of them to keep committing crimes. It's not like they can find a way forward without either lying to get a real job, which can come back to bite them in the butt, or walking down that path they know so well already.
And their gun rights are just a part of that path, of course, because it's rooted in that same idea.
With violent felons, one can see why people aren't so quick to forgive and forget, but for non-violent felons? I mean, Trump is convicted of giving money to someone through improper financial means, basically. He's not exactly going to be knocking off rivals.
That's the Clintons' schtick, anyway.
Trump might just be the person we need in order to protect gun rights for non-violent felons. It's only too bad he didn't address this while in office.
