Jacob Sullum, at Townhall.com has a piece that warms my heart entitled Mel Gibson Regains Gun Rights, Highlighting Injustice of Federal Law for Nonviolent Offenders. As Sullen points out, Congress created the lifetime prohibition for anyone convicted of a crime with a potential sentence exceeding a year. Then gave people a way to regain their gun rights, but turned around and refused to fund the process. In any case, I don't see the ATF ever wanting anyone to have these rights in the first place.
Like millions of Americans, Mel Gibson has a criminal record that disqualifies him from legally owning a gun. Unlike nearly all of those people, the movie star, whom President Donald Trump has designated as one of his three "ambassadors" to Hollywood, will be relieved of that disability, thanks to a recent decision by Attorney General Pam Bondi that also covers nine less famous individuals.
...snip...
To give you a sense of how capacious that category is, it includes the president himself, who last year was convicted of 34 state felonies involving falsification of business records. Because of those convictions, which did not result in any formal punishment, a man entrusted with control of the nation's vast military might, including its nuclear weapons, is not allowed to own a gun.
No matter what you think about the underlying case, that situation makes no sense as a matter of public safety. It is likewise hard to see the logic of taking away someone's Second Amendment rights because he grew or sold marijuana, underreported his income to obtain food stamps, misrepresented the thickness of shoe inserts, tampered with fishing gear, inadvertently transported a box of ammunition into Mexico, or committed any of the myriad other nonviolent offenses that trigger this disability.
David Codrea, author of The War on Guns website and a writer of articles for various gun publications notes: if a man cannot be trusted with a gun, he cannot be trusted without a custodian. We used to understand that, and kept dangerous people in prison, or hanged them. It is time we acknowledged the truth of this statement and put it into practice. Note that the same people who claim to be "keeping guns out of the wrong hands" are doing their best to keep the "wrong hands" out of prison in many cases.
Enough!
If someone is convicted of a nonviolent crime, then after serving their time, their gun rights should be restored. But, if it is the opinion that some can not be trusted with guns, those people should never be let out among us. Of course, there wouldn't be this problem if there weren't so many laws, rules, regulations and sometimes made up crap in the first place.
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