By Dave Workman
Last month, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order headlined “protecting Second Amendment Rights,” which allows certain non-violent convicted felons to begin the process for having their gun rights restored, it became quickly obvious from which direction headline writers were coming.
At NPR, the headline read “The Trump DOJ is giving guns back to felons, including one alleged fake elector.” The “fake elector” to whom the headline alluded was a Republican Arizona state senator, who had received a pardon from Trump in November. A Presidential pardon translates to full restoration of rights; a clean slate, same as if it is granted by Joe Biden to his son, who was convicted of a federal gun law violation?
More recently, WPBN in Kalamazoo, Mich., also reported on this story. Its headline was, “Program to give felons with ‘non-violent’ convictions chance to have gun rights restored.” Nothing about “fake electors” and no subtle attempt to make it appear the administration is re-arming dangerous criminals.
These different approaches might offer some insight into why Congress last year voted to cut public funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which helped fund NPR, PBS and “many local radio and TV stations.” NBC News, which reported this story, described CPB as a “private, non-profit corporation,” but was it really? After all, if CPB was “stripped…of more than $1 billion in funding” by Congress, just how private and non-profit was this corporation?
The rights restoration effort has been a political football kicked around Capitol Hill for more than 30 years, since Congress voted to eliminate funding a program under the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives called “relief from disabilities.” Congressional anti-gunners wanted lifetime loss of Second Amendment rights for people convicted of felonies and certain misdemeanors.
As WPBN explained, the renewed rights restoration plan “aims to restore rights to individuals who do not pose a public safety risk and have completed their felony conviction sentences.”
“Those with dangerous histories, or certain sex or violent offenses, will not be eligible for the program,” the report noted.
While ATF had been doing rights restoration investigations before funding was axed in 1992, Attorney General Pam Bondi has shifted the responsibility to the Department of Justice, of which ATF is one part. NPR noted in its report that six Capitol Hill Democrats wanted the rights restorations by DOJ to stop. Those Democrats were identified as U.S. Senators Patty Murray (Washington), Dick Durbin (Illinois) and Chris Van Hollen (Maryland), along with Representatives Rosa DeLauro (Connecticut), Grace Meng (New York) and Jamie Raskin (Maryland). They say Bondi violated federal law with the shift, but the agency reportedly argues that the Attorney General has the underlying power to grant relief.
The gun control organization Brady United—described in the NPR report as a “gun violence prevention group”—is not pleased, either.
Less noise, at least so far, has been generated by another recent move by the administration, this one regarding a decision by the Department of Veterans Affairs to stop reporting veterans to the FBI/NICS system because they can’t manage their own finances. Once reported, veterans were losing their Second Amendment rights. Gun rights groups and pro-gun Republican members of Congress have been complaining about this, and trying to solve it for several years.
Now, as noted by Military Times, the Department will stop reporting these veterans.
The old rule had been adopted on the grounds that it protected veterans “with mental impairments by limiting access to a lethal means of suicide.” The downside to that was the potential loss of rights discouraged veterans from seeking help.
