SAF Sued Over Lifetime Gun Bans for Non-Violent Felons. The Justice Department Just Built the Application Portal.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

WASHINGTON, DC — Attorney General Todd Blanche finalized a federal regulation on August 17, 2026 and launched a new process allowing people who are prohibited from possessing firearms because of criminal convictions to apply to have their federal gun rights restored, according to the Justice Department’s announcement.

The Department’s press release, provided in advance to Breitbart News, quotes Blanche saying, “The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and the federal government should not permanently deprive Americans of a constitutional right without regard to whether they pose a danger to public safety. This rule establishes a rigorous, commonsense process that protects the public while giving deserving Americans a real path to restoration,” as reported by Breitbart News, which also published the release’s eligibility language and the reference to the Department’s new Federal Firearm Rights Restoration Program website.

The Second Amendment Foundation said in an Instagram post that the Department “released its final regulation re-establishing a formal pathway for non-violent felons to seek restoration of their Second Amendment rights,” and that SAF “led the way on this important issue, bringing multiple constitutional challenges to the lifetime prohibition for even non-violent felons.” The group called the announcement “an exciting next step” and said its review of the final regulation is still ongoing, with further comment to follow if the details warrant it. That last part is worth taking at face value. The organization that sued over these bans has not finished reading the rule, which is a reasonable signal for the rest of us to slow down before declaring what it does.

The release draws a hard line on who is not getting relief. “Absent extraordinary circumstances, violent felons, registered sex offenders, illegal aliens, and other individuals who present an ongoing danger will remain presumptively ineligible for relief,” the Department says. Applications are considered individually, and the burden sits with the applicant: each one “must establish to the Attorney General’s satisfaction that the circumstances giving rise to the prohibition, together with the applicant’s record, reputation, and subsequent conduct, demonstrate that the applicant is not likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety and that granting relief would not be contrary to the public interest.”

Federal law has allowed prohibited people to petition for restoration of gun rights for decades. The reason nobody could actually use it is money. Since 1992, Congress has effectively barred the ATF from spending funds to process those applications, and the new rule works around that by standing up a separate application system run through an online portal at the Justice Department, as reported by KCRA in an Associated Press account of the announcement. A right you can petition for but nobody is funded to review is a right on paper only, and that is the specific problem this rule is aimed at.

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Federal relief is not the whole picture. Restoring federal gun rights does not wipe out state-level restrictions and state laws that may still bar a person from possessing a firearm or holding a carry license, so anyone in this position needs to read their own state’s rules alongside the federal process.

I will continue tracking the Federal Firearm Rights Restoration Program, the first grants and denials to come out of it, and any legal or congressional challenge to the rule.