Violent criminals should not have guns. Full stop.
But what about the individual who got into legal trouble and became a convicted felon decades ago? Is there no path to restoration for someone who picked up the pieces and returned to life as an upstanding citizen?
The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), National Rifle Association (NRA), and Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on this volatile issue in Johnson v. United States. The gun rights advocates argue that the nation’s historical tradition targets dangerous people for disarmament, not nonviolent felons from the distant past.
Permanent gun bans are not consistent with nation’s history and tradition
Kostas Moros is the SAF Director of Legal Research and Education. He noted that a single, nonviolent offense should not, in and of itself, eradicate a person’s gun rights forever.
“Heller’s ‘presumptively lawful’ line was never a blank check for a lifetime ban on every peaceable American with a felony on his record,” Moros declared. “Historically, we disarmed dangerous people. We did not strip the Second Amendment right from those who broke the law without violence and then went back to living as ordinary, peaceable citizens.”
The advocate added that such permanent banishment without a “path to restoration is simply not how our tradition worked.”
Permanent gun bans do not pass Bruen test as required
The NRA acknowledged the shooting community’s conviction that those who pose a danger to themselves or others must be disarmed.
“But there is no historical tradition of disarming peaceable citizens,” the group wrote in a release. “Rather, historically, peaceable citizens–including nonviolent felons–were expressly permitted and often required to keep and bear arms.”
These are people who paid their debt to society and resumed living productive lives. Without relapsing into crime, they deserve the ability to move forward and reclaim their fundamental rights.
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