&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "‘Second Amendment not a second-class right’: Trump DOJ moves to restore gun rights for convicted felons")
US Attorney General Todd Blanche has launched a new Justice Department programme allowing some people with felony convictions to seek restoration of their federal right to own firearms, opening a new and potentially contentious chapter in the Trump administration's Second Amendment agenda.
The DOJ said the initiative will allow people who lost their federal firearm rights because of qualifying criminal convictions to apply for restoration. The department expects as many as 330,000 applications under the new process.
Not a second-class right
Blanche defended the move by arguing that constitutional rights should not be permanently taken away without considering whether an individual currently poses a threat.
"The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and the federal government should not permanently deprive Americans of a constitutional right without regard to whether they pose a danger to public safety," Blanche said.
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Who can apply?
The programme is aimed at people who are federally prohibited from possessing firearms because of their criminal records. The DOJ says certain categories will remain excluded, including undocumented immigrants, registered sex offenders, and people convicted of violent crimes.
Notably, the programme does not automatically return gun rights. Applications will be reviewed individually, with public safety taken into account.
The public safety question
The move comes against a complicated backdrop. Research published in the BMJ Group's Injury Prevention has found that prohibited people do sometimes continue to possess firearms despite legal bans.
A study using California data found that, as of February 2015, nearly 19,000 prohibited people possessed almost 50,000 firearms, 92per cent of them handguns. Researchers used those figures to estimate that around 100,000 prohibited firearm owners nationally may have possessed guns. The estimate is not a count of all convicted felons who own guns, but an extrapolation based on California data.
Another Injury Prevention study found that among firearm offenders in 13 states, people already prohibited from owning guns were far less likely to have obtained their weapons from licensed dealers. Only 3.9 per cent obtained their firearm from a licensed dealer, compared with 19.9 per cent among offenders who were not prohibited.
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Gun deaths remain a major US issue
The debate is unfolding as firearm deaths remain a major public health concern in the United States. According to the CDC, 44,447 people died from firearm injuries in 2024. Of those, 27,593 were firearm suicides, and 15,364 were firearm homicides.
