The DOJ brought the gun rights restoration process under its own wing, all to stave off a repeated little bit of legislative nonsense that defunded the ATF's ability to do so.
Anti-gunners wanted felons to lose their rights for life, with no hope of restoration, but that's gone, and some are thrilled to hear it.
The truth is that, as someone who thinks that anyone too dangerous to be trusted with their gun rights is someone who wasn't locked up for long enough, the middle ground on this is some kind of rights restoration process, or, even better, stop taking gun rights from non-violent felons. Since we do that, restoration is probably the most viable option, especially because the process already exists; we just needed to fund it.
And people do change. Some people have a rough time, make terrible choices, or hang out with terrible people and get caught up in bad things, but then turn it around and start walking the straight and narrow.
In Michigan, one convicted felon is looking forward to applying to get his gun rights back.
Convicted felons could get their federal gun rights back in just a few weeks.
One man previously convicted in Metro Detroit hopes a proposed Department of Justice program comes to fruition.
Local 4 first found out about Terrance Caren’s story from his attorney, Barton Morris, in Troy.
“Terry hasn’t had a criminal offense, I believe, since 2002,” Morris, the principal attorney at the Law Offices of Barton Morris and the Founder of armedagain.com, said. “Prior to that, he was a different person. It was over 20 years ago, he had an assault offense and a number of nonviolent felony offenses. Now, he hasn’t caused any trouble, not so much as a traffic ticket.”
After petitioning, Caren got his state firearm rights back last year.
Since his last conviction in 2002, he says he’s helped raise a family, been married to his wife, and worked for many years.
“I did construction landscaping for about 28 years,” Caren said.
In other words, he kept his nose clean for coming up on 24 years now.
If that's not the threshold for being reformed, what is? What's the magic number?
There are people out there who no doubt think the reason he kept his record clean for this long is that he just got better at not getting caught. While that might be true of some people, it's not true of everyone. The truth is that no one ever thinks they're going to get caught in the first place, and so it's kind of difficult to believe that somehow, out of the blue, someone just figured out the magic sauce to committing felonies without capture.
No, most of them really did turn their lives around, and why do we keep punishing these people indefinitely? What happened to the idea of having paid their debt to society?
Rights matter, and if someone like Caren can get their voting rights back--and felons get those back fairly quickly--then why not their gun rights? The state already granted them.
Honestly, this is one of the better moves by the Bondi DOJ.
If only they weren't so dead set on defending every other federal gun control law out there, all despite them being so horrendously unconstitutional.
Millions are expected to apply for gun rights restoration.
People like Caren should be a no-brainer. For others, there might be a little bit of doubt, but let's remember that the felons who are the problem out there seem to be getting guns just fine.
Anyone trying to get their rights restored is probably one of those with no interest in playing those kinds of games with their life anymore. There will be exceptions, but they'll be just that: exceptions.
