DOJ Sort of Responds to FOIA Request About Gun Rights Restoration

We know the DOJ said they’re going to stand up the process for gun rights restoration for non-violent felons. This has been a long time coming, and my hope is that a lot of good people take advantage of it.

But the problem is that no one has an inkling of what that will look like.

David Codrea has tried to look into it. In particular, he wanted to know about the criteria that would be used, and about the 10 individuals who have already had their rights restored. So, with that in mind, the next step was filing a FOIA request with the Department of Justice, then a complaint when they didn’t respond in the timeframe required by law, and finally got an answer. 

Well, sort of.

Despite that standard legal reaction, Thursday’s interim response, including a Memorandum for the Attorney General on “Candidates for Relief from Firearms Disability,” advised “that a search has been conducted and material responsive to your request has been located. At this time, I have determined that five pages are appropriate for release with certain information withheld pursuant to Exemptions 5 and 6 of the FOIA… and copies are enclosed.”

Citing “inter- and intra-agency communications protected by civil discovery privileges,” and  “information the release of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” the memorandum is heavily redacted, to where all that is included pertaining to the candidates is their names, not the criteria used to determine their eligibility (outside of U.S. Code citations noting the Attorney General is empowered to grant relief to those determined “’not… likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety and’ where ‘the grating of relief would not be contrary to the public interest.’”)

The FOIA request never asked for anything that was not a matter of nonexempt record, and the intent behind the effort was simply to determine what criteria citizens seeking similar relief would need to meet to prove themselves eligible for equal treatment.

Because this is an “interim response,” more documents should be coming. We’ll have to wait to see what they disclose.

Understand that when Codrea writes “heavily redacted,” what that means is that there’s absolutely nothing of use here. They sent pages of almost nothing but black bars.

We have the names of the 10 people, a brief synopsis of the law in paragraph one, and Bondi’s signature at the bottom of the page saying she was granting those people their gun rights back.

So much for transparency, huh?

Of course, as Codrea notes, more records should be coming, and hopefully, those will actually be useful in some manner. These certainly weren’t.

And this is a big issue, because a lot of people are looking at this and hoping they can qualify. These are people who have been denied their gun rights for years, despite doing precisely what we want from a convicted felon. They reformed and are now model citizens, many taking up the challenge of trying to help others clean up their lives, too.

It’s not right that people continue to be punished indefinitely for their mistakes. We say they paid their debt to society when they walk out of prison or finish parole, but the truth is that too many people want to make them pay forever.

It’s not because they have it out for felons, because they’re more than willing to let the violent ones out of prison as soon as they can. It’s simply that they don’t want anyone having guns, and so this is just another method to try and make it so fewer people will. Who cares if you’ve cleaned up your life, you want a gun, and that’s too much for people like Sen. Chuck Schumer.

But soon, hopefully, we’ll find out what people need to do and just who qualifies. 

The sooner, the better, so these people can really get their full rights back–the same rights every other American enjoys.

Editor’s Note: President Trump and Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.

Help us continue to report on their efforts and legislative successes. Join Bearing Arms VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership.