“Restoration of Firearm Rights After Conviction: A National Survey and Suggestions for Reform”

The title of this post is the title of this new report released today by the Collateral Consequences Resource Center (CCRC) authoed by Margaret Love and Beth Johnson.  The full report runs 64 pages and is effectively summarized in this new post at CCRC’s website.  Here are parts of that post: 

Loss of firearm rights after a felony conviction extends well beyond what is necessary to advance public safety objectives, according to a study released today by the Collateral Consequences Resource Center. The loss of rights is permanent in most states, and under federal law.

The study shows that each state operates under its own complex legal framework with overlapping federal requirements that create the possibility of further criminal jeopardy for inadvertent violations. Only 13 states limit dispossession to violent crimes, and more than two-thirds of the states offer no route to firearm relief to residents convicted in another state or in federal court. Only 16 states provide a way to regain lost rights that is easily accessible to all state residents.

CCRC’s report, Restoration of Firearm Rights After Conviction: A National Survey and Suggestions for Reform, offers a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the differing ways states restrict and restore the right to possess a firearm, including relevant sections of statutory text to facilitate analysis and comparison. This detailed information on state laws has not been made previously available, and is timely in light of impending changes to federal firearm restoration.

In almost every state, the process for regaining firearm rights is complex and difficult to navigate. Restoration of federal rights currently depends on restoration under state law, which means that restoration is effectively unavailable to many people, notably including those convicted in federal court whose only remedy is a presidential pardon.

Broad categorical dispossession laws like those in most states are more vulnerable to constitutional challenge under the Second Amendment when there is no individualized assessment of public safety risk, according to Margaret Love, one of the co-authors of the report. “There is no empirical research that would support restricting firearm rights in the case of non-violent offenses.”…

The change in federal firearm restoration procedures under consideration by the Department of Justice should encourage states to look carefully at restoration provisions in their own laws to determine whether more restrictive state provisions should outlive federal ones.  States will also have to consider whether to offer opportunities for restoration of rights to all state residents rather than restricting them to people convicted in their own state courts.