It's Time for Rights Restoration

Under federal law, Americans who have been convicted of crimes that are punishable by prison sentences of more than one year's duration are automatically deprived of their constitutional right to keep and bear arms—even after their sentences have been completed and even if the person never actually served a day in custody. This rule has been in force since the passage of the 1968 Gun Control Act, and it is applied everywhere in the country, irrespective of the character of the crime at hand.

Outside of a few esoteric exemptions ("antitrust violations, unfair trade practices, restraints of trade or other similar offenses relating to the regulation of business practices"), and an asterisk next to state misdemeanors that yield imprisonment of two years or less, there are no caveats within the statute. The law does not distinguish between violent and nonviolent crimes; it does not turn upon a finding of dangerousness; and it includes no classification mechanism to sort between different types of lawbreaking. In consequence, it applies equally to a person who has been convicted of misdemeanor welfare fraud and is sentenced to probation as to a person who has been convicted of felony murder and serves decades in prison—providing that the sentencing guidelines fit the bill.

If, in a fit of overzealous pique, a state were to turn littering into a felony punishable by more than 365 days in prison, those who were convicted under that law would automatically lose their right to keep and bear arms. In this area, alas, the justice system isn't so much blind as it is braindead. …