Trump administration prepares to give gun rights back to some convicts
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The US Justice Department still supports laws ensuring “violent and dangerous people” cannot lawfully acquire firearms.
PHOTO: ERIC LEE/NYTIMES
Devlin Barrett
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WASHINGTON – The US Justice Department plans to create a path for people with criminal convictions to own guns again, an issue that became contentious at the agency when officials there sought to restore that right to actor Mel Gibson, a prominent supporter of President Donald Trump.
The move would hand a victory to gun rights supporters less than a year after the Supreme Court ruled that the government could restrict firearms access
Shortly after Attorney-General Pam Bondi was confirmed in February, Mr Trump ordered a review of the federal government’s gun policies.
The department still supports laws ensuring “violent and dangerous people” cannot lawfully acquire firearms, as long as there is an “appropriate avenue” to restore rights to people who have earned the chance to own guns again, according to an interim rule set to be published on March 20 in the Federal Register.
Determining whose gun rights should be restored depends on a number of factors, the notice says, including a “combination of the nature of their past criminal activity and their subsequent and current law-abiding behaviour”.
Under a decades-old law, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) can return gun rights to specific people. But starting in 1992, congressional spending Bills barred the ATF from doing so.
The interim rule would effectively give that authority to the Attorney-General, who would then delegate it to another Justice Department official or office.
Gun Owners of America, a lobbying group, called the decision “outstanding progress”.
Ms Kris Brown, the president of Brady, a gun control advocacy group, said that the change was a “blatant and dangerous power grab by the Trump administration and a gift to his donors in the gun industry”.
The issue has been fiercely debated in the Justice Department in recent weeks.
Ms Elizabeth Oyer, the department’s former pardon attorney, was fired earlier in March after she refused to recommend that Mr Gibson be added to a small group of people getting their gun rights restored. NYTIMES
