Last updated August 2026 · By Nick Hall, tracks federal and state firearms policy daily for USA Gun Shop readers
Quick take: The Justice Department published a final rule on August 20 creating a working process for restoring federal gun rights to people with nonviolent convictions. The relief mechanism has technically existed since 1965 but Congress defunded it in 1992, so for most of three decades there was no way to actually use it. There is now.
- What happened: DOJ’s final rule on applications for relief from federal firearms disabilities was published in the Federal Register on August 20, 2026.
- Why it matters: The relief process in 18 U.S.C. section 925(c) has been unfunded and unusable since 1992, leaving a court petition as the only realistic route back.
- What’s next: DOJ takes applications and decides them case by case, with violent offenders, sex offenders and a defined set of serious crimes excluded up front.
- Who to watch: The Office of the Pardon Attorney, which absorbs the workload, and the first denials, which will set the shape of judicial review.
Rights restoration has been the most quietly consequential gap in federal gun law for a generation. Not because the mechanism did not exist, but because Congress funded it out of existence and then everyone stopped talking about it, which meant a man with a 1994 cheque fraud conviction had the same federal firearms status as an armed robber and no practical way to change it.
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Table of Contents
The Thirty-Year Hole in Section 925(c)
18 U.S.C. § 925(c) has said since 1965 that a person subject to federal firearms disabilities may apply to the Attorney General for relief, and that relief shall be granted where the applicant is not likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety.
In 1992 Congress attached a rider to the appropriations bill barring ATF from spending any funds processing those applications. The rider has been renewed every year since. The statute stayed on the books and the door stayed welded shut, which the Supreme Court noted without much enthusiasm in a 2002 decision holding that an unprocessed application was not a denial a court could review.
So for 26 years the answer to a nonviolent felon asking how to get his rights back was: move the conviction itself, or nothing.
What the Final Rule Actually Does
The rule moves the function out from under the defunded ATF line item and creates an application process with published criteria. Applicants submit a full criminal history, and DOJ weighs the nature of the underlying offence, time elapsed, and evidence of rehabilitation.
The exclusions are where the detail lives. Violent felonies are out. Sex offences are out. A defined set of serious crimes is out. What is in scope is the large and largely invisible population of people carrying a decades-old nonviolent conviction, the tax fraud and the drug possession and the bad cheque, who have been federally prohibited ever since.
The US Pardon Attorney called restoring rights very American, which is either a good line or a preview of the litigation, depending on your priors.
The Objection That Actually Has Teeth
The strongest criticism is not that nonviolent offenders should stay prohibited forever. It is that a discretionary executive process with no statutory deadline and no guaranteed judicial review can be switched off by the next administration as easily as it was switched on.
That objection is correct. A rule promulgated by one Justice Department can be rescinded by another, and anyone treating this as permanent is not paying attention to how the last four years of federal firearms rulemaking have gone. Three Biden-era ATF rules have been struck down or abandoned this month alone.
But an imperfect route back is still a route back, and there has not been one of those since 1992.
The Numbers Nobody Publishes
There is no clean public figure for how many Americans are federally prohibited on a nonviolent conviction. The FBI’s NICS denial data tells you how many purchases were stopped, not how many people gave up before trying. Academic estimates of the total prohibited population run into the millions, and the nonviolent share of that is the group this rule speaks to.
What is measurable is the shape of the demand. Before the 1992 funding bar, ATF processed a few thousand relief applications a year and granted a minority of them. Scale that participation rate across three decades of accumulated convictions and the queue that forms in front of this new process is going to be considerably larger than the office that has to work through it.
Why the Rulemaking Route Was Chosen
The obvious question is why the Justice Department went through notice-and-comment rulemaking at all, rather than simply asking Congress to lift the appropriations rider that has blocked the process since 1992. The answer is that lifting the rider requires a majority in both chambers every single year, and the rider has survived thirty-three consecutive appropriations cycles under both parties.
A rule can be issued once and it operates until somebody takes it away. That is a lower bar than annual legislative maintenance, and it is why the executive route was the only realistic one. It is also, precisely, why the result is fragile.
What Applicants Should Expect
Slow. The Office of the Pardon Attorney is not a large operation and the backlog of people who have been waiting three decades for this door to open is not small. Anyone expecting a decision this year is going to be disappointed.
State-level disabilities are a separate question and this rule does not touch them. A restoration of federal rights does not override a state prohibition, and the interaction between the two is exactly the sort of thing that generates a wrongful-possession prosecution for somebody who thought they were clear. Check your state before you check your federal status, and if you are relying on either, get it in writing.
The other thing to expect is documentation. This is a process built on proving a negative, that you are not likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety, and the applicants who do well will be the ones who arrive with employment history, character references and a clean two decades already assembled rather than the ones who arrive with a grievance.
A statute that has been law since 1965 and dead since 1992 has a pulse again. That is the story. Whether it survives the next administration is a different one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who qualifies under the DOJ rights restoration rule?
The rule targets people with nonviolent convictions who are subject to federal firearms disabilities. Violent felonies, sex offences and a defined list of serious crimes are excluded. Each application is decided on its facts, weighing the offence, the time elapsed and evidence of rehabilitation.
Why could nobody use section 925(c) before?
The statute has authorised relief since 1965, but in 1992 Congress barred ATF from spending appropriated funds processing applications, and has renewed that bar every year since. The right existed on paper with no mechanism behind it.
Does this restore my rights in my state?
No. Federal and state firearms disabilities are separate. A federal restoration does not override a state prohibition, and you can be clear federally and still prohibited where you live. Check your state law independently.
How long will an application take?
There is no statutory deadline and the office handling applications is small, so expect a long wait. Anyone promising a timeline is guessing.
Can the next administration cancel this?
Yes. It is an executive rule, not a statute. A future Justice Department can rescind or narrow it through the same rulemaking process, which is the main structural criticism of the approach.
Is a pardon the same thing as rights restoration?
No. A pardon addresses the conviction. This process addresses the firearms disability that flows from it. They are different mechanisms with different standards, though both run through the Office of the Pardon Attorney.
What if my application is denied?
The scope of judicial review is unsettled, and the first denials will determine a great deal about how much review applicants actually get. A 2002 Supreme Court decision held that an application ATF never processed was not a reviewable denial, which is a different situation from a decision on the merits.
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