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April 21, 2025 - Epoch Times
13:52
New Path for Gun Ownership for 10M+ People; DOJ Claws Back Authority from ATF
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The Attorney General of the United States has just issued a new Justice Department policy, a new final interim rule, which has flung the door wide open for potentially upwards of 10 million people to have their Second Amendment rights restored.
Let's go through it together.
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To start with, one of the, you can say, quirks of the American judicial system is that sometimes the rights enumerated in the US Constitution are seen as inviolable, sacred rights that are offered to every American citizen.
People march in the street if there's even a slight indication that those rights are being infringed upon.
However, at other times, those very same rights are treated as privileges, things that the government can take away from you if, according to them, you don't behave properly.
For instance, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says, and I quote, Obviously, very straightforward.
However, for anyone convicted of a felony, or for anyone sentenced to over a year in prison, well, they've actually been stripped of their Second Amendment privileges, regardless of whether the crimes that they committed were violent or non-violent.
Now, the most high-profile example of this is our very own Commander-in-Chief.
Professionally, Donald Trump commands the entirety of the U.S. Armed Forces.
He has the sole discretion to use nuclear weapons, but as a private citizen, he can no longer own a gun because he was convicted of 34 state felonies.
And his case is really emblematic.
Trump was convicted for violating a New York law that prohibits falsification of business records.
It's a nonviolent crime.
His sentence included no jail time and no probation.
And yet, because his conviction involved a crime that, in theory, was punishable by more than a year in prison, he is now subject to a federal law that prohibits him from possessing any sort of a firearm.
Now, the relevant long question is this one here.
You can see it up on your screen.
It's Title 18 of the U.S. Code, Subsection 922.
It reads in part, quote, It shall be unlawful for any person to own a firearm who has been convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.
Now, despite being just Secondly,
of whether that sentence was actually imposed or not if the crime was in theory punishable by upwards of a year in prison that counts secondly the
the offense in question did not have to be violent.
The law says nothing about violent crimes, and so non-violent...
White-collar crimes are included as well.
And also, there is no time limit.
It doesn't matter how long ago the conviction was.
Now, if someone doesn't agree with this ban and they try to defy it by owning a gun anyway, they will be committing an additional federal felony punishable by upwards of 15 years in prison.
And also, if that person buys a gun from an actual dealer, they would have to lie in the federal form that you have to fill out when you buy a gun, which would be two more federal felonies.
Basically, if you just count it all up, a prohibited person who still tries to exercise his or her Second Amendment privilege...
I call them privileges in this scenario, not rights.
They can face upwards of 50 years in prison.
Now, it is worth noting that the law includes a method by which a prohibited person can ask the U.S. Attorney General to restore his or her gun rights.
Whether they do it or not, it's completely up to the discretion of the U.S. Attorney General, and it must be based on a specific determination.
Here's specifically what the law says in this regard.
The Director, meaning the Attorney General, may grant relief to an applicant if it is established to the satisfaction of the Director.
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.
The director will not ordinarily grant relief if the applicant has not been discharged from parole or probation for a period of at least two years.
Relief will not be granted to an applicant who is prohibited from possessing all types of firearms by the law of the state where such applicant resides.
Meaning that according to the letter of the law, if you are two years out from your probation period and you don't have a blanket gun ban against you from your own state, there is a chance that the U.S. Attorney General could receive a probation.
Except, since 1992, that has literally been impossible.
You see, this responsibility...
To restore gun rights to non-violent offenders had actually been delegated to the ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
They're the ones who are supposed to collect these applications and then process them.
However, in 1992, there was a provision passed in the form of a rioter, and it's been renewed every year since, which says the following, quote, Meaning that since the year 1992,
Congress prohibited the ATF from using any resources to process the applications for relief.
And so, if you just really think about the implications here, it's wild.
Congress passed a law which included a remedy for people to be able to restore their gun rights.
However, that remedy was transferred over to the ATF.
But then the ATF was explicitly prohibited from being able to process any applications.
This made it such that for the past 33 years, there has been no recourse for people looking to get back their Second Amendment rights.
The only thing they could theoretically do was to get a presidential pardon.
But good luck with that.
However, it looks like the state of affairs is actually really going to change.
Specifically, Ms. Pam Bondi, the Attorney General of the United States, she has put forward a new interim final rule for the Justice Department.
You can see it up on your screen.
This new rule, which took effect last month on March 20th, it rescinds the delegation of this process to the ATF, and it brings it back within the Attorney General's office.
Meaning that this weird state of affairs where the ATF was responsible for handling these applications, but legally couldn't do so, is coming to an end.
Let's go through the rule together.
Now, in regards to why the state of affairs came about in the first place, meaning the rationale for why Congress created this strange situation, here's what it says.
Quote. In the early 1990s, Congress became concerned about the number of resources that ATF was using to adjudicate requests to relieve individual Americans from disabilities under ownership of firearms.
Legislators worried that judging whether applicants possessed a danger to public safety was a very difficult and subjective task.
They also averred that too many felons whose gun ownership rights were restored went on to commit crimes with firearms.
They thought that ATF should focus on its core function of investigating violations of federal...
Now, that does make you wonder why that power was delegated to the ATF in the first place, but regardless, the rule continues.
To start over with a clean state, the DOJ rescinds the delegation of Section 935C authority to the ATF and withdraws the morbid regulations governing individual applications to that agency.
Meaning that the ATF will no longer be the sub-agency delegated to taking care of these applications, which they weren't doing anyway.
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Pam Bondi then went on in this rule to state that consistent with President Trump's new executive order that protects Second Amendment rights, the Office of the Attorney General will be reasserting their right to process these gun restoration applications.
Although this rule does state that clearing the path to be able to do so might require new legislation to come out of Congress.
The DOJ respects congressional appropriations prerogatives and expects its forthcoming plan under President Trump's executive order to include legislative proposals to modify or rescind the rider.
The DOJ is also undertaking a broader examination of how to address the drain on resources that caused Congress to impose the rider in the first instance, including by addressing any potential inefficiencies in the regulatory process.
It anticipates future actions, including rulemaking consistent with applicable law, to give full effect to Title 18 U.S. Meaning in plain English that the new process for the processing of these applications has yet to be established,
but the old process is no more.
And so, that is that.
The rule is currently in the public comment period where Americans can head on over to the DOJ website and leave their thoughts on whether this rule should or shouldn't be implemented.
I'll leave the link down in the description box to where you can leave your comments.
But as you can imagine, gun advocacy organizations are fairly pleased with this new development.
For instance, you had the Gun Owners of America, the GOA, which is one of the largest Second Amendment groups in the country.
They released a statement following the implementation of this rule, which said the following, quote, For decades, law-abiding Americans who have had their gun rights unfairly restricted have been left in legal limbo, creating an unconstitutional de facto lifetime gun ban.
This bureaucratic failure has denied thousands of individuals their lawful opportunity to restore their rights.
The DOJ's decision to finally withdraw ATF's authority in this matter is an encouraging sign that this administration is serious about protecting the Second Amendment for all Americans.
And, by the way, it's worth mentioning that this rule change will affect a lot of people.
That's because roughly half of the 20 million felons in America were convicted for non-violent offenses, meaning that upwards of 10 million people stand to regain their Second Amendment rights.
Now, in terms of the next steps, this interim final rule went into effect on March 20th, while simultaneously accepting public comments before being issued as a final...
This means, in practice, that if you are a nonviolent felon who meets the other criteria that we discussed, you can soon apply to have your Second Amendment rights restored.
And I'll also mention that because this rule change involves inter-agency regulations, the comment period is just a formality.
None of the comments will actually affect the final, final rule.
People can just leave their comments anyway, but the final rule will pretty much be the same as the interim final rule.
However, as I mentioned earlier, within the text of the final rule, there has not yet been established a process for how a nonviolent felon can apply to have their 2A rights restored.
And so probably within the next year, Pam Bondi and the DOJ will lay out the actual paperwork process.
And once they do, I will do a follow-up episode giving you that update.
Until then, if you'd like to go through either the relevant law or this new rule change, I'll throw all those links down into the description box below.
And actually, I'd love to know your thoughts on the matter.
Do you think that this is a good development?
I mean, very famously, there was a case, a separate case, where Sam Alito, the Supreme Court justice, he wrote that quote, the federal statute barring felons from possessing firearms probably does more to combat gun violence than any other federal law.
And so given that, do you agree?
Or do you think that a blanket ban doesn't make sense and that there should be a clear distinction between violent and nonviolent offenders?
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Please leave them in the comment section below.
I'll be reading through them later tonight as well as over the weekend.
And as always, as you're making your way down there to either the links or the comment section to leave your thoughts, do please smash that like button so that this video can reach ever more people and also smash that subscribe button.
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And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from The Epoch Times.
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