A Target on Your Back, A Right Taken Away
There is a striking irony in the Trump administration’s new effort to restore firearm rights to people with felony convictions. Attorney General Todd Blanche says the Second Amendment should not be treated as a “second-class right” and that people should not be permanently deprived of a constitutional right without considering whether they actually pose a danger to public safety. The new federal process will allow many people with past felony convictions to seek restoration of their federal firearm rights.
But there is one group the new rule specifically singles out for presumptive exclusion: people required to register as sex offenders.
If the justification for restoring firearm rights is that a person should not permanently lose a constitutional right merely because of a past conviction and that individualized consideration should focus on whether the person presents a current danger why should a person remain categorically disfavored simply because they are required to register?
There is an additional irony that policymakers rarely acknowledge: people on sex-offender registries are themselves frequent targets of vigilantism, harassment, assaults, violence and murder precisely because their identities and addresses are publicly exposed.
The government tells registrants that they must live under a system that publicly identifies where they live, what car they drive, where they work or travel. It creates a permanent digital label that can follow someone for decades or for life. Yet when those same people face the predictable consequences of that exposure, the government is prepared to say they are presumptively unworthy of the ability to defend themselves. According to this article, “Some groups will “remain presumptively ineligible for relief,” including undocumented immigrants, violent felons and registered sex offenders.”
FAC is not arguing that every registrant should automatically have the right to possess a firearm. We are arguing that constitutional rights should be evaluated based on the individual — not by an automatic lifetime label attached to a person because of a conviction. If the government believes that current dangerousness matters when deciding whether someone should possess a firearm, then that principle should apply consistently.
A constitutional right shouldn’t disappear simply because a person carries a label.
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The public cries out for our blood and the politicians gladly feed it to them for votes. If the Supreme Court won’t save us, it will be left to God. Florida’s Amendment 4 cut me deep; this guts me..
I would agree to never ever own a gun again versus getting off the registry, and that is my goal, is to be free from registration and be able to help my family. I believe in gun ownership but freedom of registration is my 2nd most thing right now after being released from all sanctions. And not talking about me stating those are above my family or my faith, just saying right now all of us are looking for the freedom train to come our way with a one way ticket off the registry.
Jimmy Rice Act would have designated an offender as “dangerous” with the ability “to protect” the citizens by “holding such dangerous offenders until they were deemed ‘safe’ to go back into society”. All offenders were tested upon incarceration!!! People we are forgetting the “out” they have handed on a proverbial plate. The state by releasing you from prison has already deemed you “safe to go back into society without risk to the public”.
Quite simply, the reason we’re excluded from this is to protect the big lie – that everyone with this label is “scary, bad and dangerous.” The only way they could have sold this measure to the public is by automatically disallowing undocumented immigrants, SO’s and people with a violent felony. So, they’re protecting the profitiable lie and the cottage industry that monitors and tracks us.
The goverment will never admitt they were wrong about us. Ever. So, they will continue to manipulate the public through fear and deception in order to maintain power and control. Factor in the entire Epstein fallout and that “Primetime” movie coming out, America’s fixation with “dropping us in a volcano” is not going away any time so. No amount of “educating the public” with facts and statistics will ever knock a dent in it society’s collective ignorance on this subject.
Which begs the question, why are we even forced to still pay taxes if we’re precluded from gun ownership for protection? All the “shall not be infringed” people only care about THEMSELVES having guns to use them on US.
Those in office that state “you cant punish everyone bc of the actions of 1 individual” and “new, stricter gun laws are not going to stop someone from obtaining a gun and using it to commit crimes” then turn around in the same breath and demand harsher, stricter registration requirements because one person was accused of a sex crime that simply got too much media attention.
Ultimately sweeping their own transgressions under the rug hiding them behind privacy laws.
Hypocrits.
Which officeholders are doing this?
Your primary thought on this is spot on @FAC and the one point everyone regardless of infractions should be making…individual assessment for all or none…no more pick and choose who it applies to and not.