The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced a bold plan to reconstruct the gun rights restoration process. While this was met with cautious optimism in the Second Amendment lobby, a prominent organization warns that changes to the present plan are “urgently needed.”
The National Rifle Association (NRA) asked its membership to advocate for an essential revision of the idea.
Group believes that there should be closer scrutiny when denying Second Amendment rights
The national advocacy group wants officials to ensure that categories of Americans who are presently denied the right to own a firearm are considered in the new setup.
The NRA wants the federal government to protect new restorations and streamline the process for the return of Second Amendment rights. It also opposes the additional cost imposed on the process.
The NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) urged its membership to note the needed improvements. “This rulemaking, however, would codify a very restrictive paradigm that would limit the discretion of future DOJ officials in taking a more holistic approach. And future anti-gun administrations could revoke, under the rule’s terms, relief granted by prior pro-gun administrations.”
Restorative gun rights deserve to be an option for those who are truly rehabilitated
In March, the DOJ announced its intention to renew the federal gun rights restoration process, though specifics were scant.
June’s DOJ budget for FY 2026 offered more clarity for funding the Office of the Pardon Attorney and the new process. The agency allocated $448,000 in new taxpayer dollars to handle applications, which seems like a modest amount considering the DOJ estimates that over 25 million Americans may apply.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) initially covered the expense of the program, but that funding was withdrawn by Congress in 1992.
This left millions without a pathway to restore their constitutional rights, even as they paid their debt to society.
This is obviously good news, but the NRA believes that the process is far from perfect. Gun rights advocates certainly applaud this move as progress, but at the same time, they anticipate backlash if reforms are not appropriately handled.
Current federal law prevents any U.S. citizen with a felony record, a domestic violence misdemeanor, or who has been involuntarily committed from possessing weapons. For decades, there has not been a path back to Second Amendment rights for a person who ran afoul of these restrictions, even if they have long since been rehabilitated.
While the new plan is an improvement, it stops far short of addressing some major issues.
For example, it still permanently bars specific categories of individuals from gun ownership, including some convicted of non-violent crimes. The NRA believes there should be substantial flexibility in determining who enjoys full Second Amendment freedoms.
“While NRA-ILA agrees that an established propensity for violent conduct should count against the granting of relief, we also think the offenses the rulemaking considers ‘closely associated with dangerousness’ are overly broad,” the organization wrote. “They include, for example, a long list of non-violent, possessory firearm offenses under the Gun Control Act or even broader state analogs: property crimes; controlled substance offenses; misdemeanors punishable by more than two years in prison; crimes in which the perpetrator and victim are not even physically in the same place; and even crimes against animals that have no human victims whatsoever.”
The NRA conceded that the original offenses should be closely scrutinized, but it argues that automatically rejecting an individual without examining their actual offense is wrong.
It also objected to steps in the restorative process that are unnecessary or even redundant.
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