Time for another unpopular opinion –

Felons who have done their time should have all their rights restored once they have completed their sentence. This includes Second Amendment rights. There are a few reasons:

  1. In this day and age, about the only people who haven’t committed a felony are infants. Between “tough on crime” initiatives and administrative law, Americans commit at least two or three felonies a day. Why should someone lose their rights because some prosecutor decided to selectively enforce a law against someone?
  2. “But what about violent felons?” A person with a propensity for both violence and crime are dangerous whether or not they have rights restored. This subset of our population would be dangerous even if they only had access to weapons that could be bought from a hardware or general store. Or fabricated from items bought at a store. Or hell, just buying gasoline.
  3. Kinda related to above is the assumption that a violent person with criminal intent would suddenly decide to get his/her weapons through legal means instead of stealing it or buying it off another criminal.

Here’s what it boils down to IMHO. Currently, we are over-criminalized AND that over-criminalization is selectively enforced. Hence, it is very easy for the state to deprive people of their civil rights, but very difficult for a person to get his/her civil rights restored. Furthermore, because the state is inefficient, other people are having their rights delayed because we do not restore people’s rights when their sentence is completed.