I’ve never liked how we treat felons in this country.
Oh, we should definitely lock them up when they deserve it, and we go way too light on some of these sentences, to say the least, but when someone has paid their debt to society, it should be considered paid in full. We don’t do that.
Instead, we continue to treat a lot of these folks like criminals for the rest of their lives. They have to check a box on most job applications that they’re felons, which doesn’t make sense for a lot of jobs, and while they can get their voting rights back eventually, gun rights have been a different matter.
Yes, that’s changing, but it’s not a simple matter of just filling out an online form and waiting for the letter saying you can buy a gun.
No, it’s a legal matter that really needs someone who understands the law to work with you, and some attorneys probably don’t want to bother with it.
In Michigan, though, there’s at least one who is doing the Lord’s work on this.
Michigan state law prohibits non-violent convicted felons from owning firearms even after they’ve completed their sentence, but Detroit-area lawyer Barton Morris is still working to restore that right.
“It’s people convicted of drug offenses or even drunk driving, theft offenses, those are the people that are going to be best for relief. They’ll best qualify,” said Morris with Mort Meisner Associates.
Morris says a new federal program proposed by the U.S Department of Justice could be the key, allowing individuals to file a petition to restore their firearm rights. The program could impact millions of people, like Clarence Overstreet, across the country.
Overstreet said he has already filed his petition.
“My felony was I had possession of cocaine. It was years ago. I was young, you know, doing what young people do,” said Overstreet.
“Just want to be able to protect me and my family at all times–go hunting with the kids. Never experienced that ever in life.”
The program in question is expected to go live within the next few weeks, and people like Morris have the chance to change lives.
More importantly, to protect them.
Look, I’m not saying that possession of cocaine is a good thing. I’m saying that if someone keeps their nose clean for years, pun not intended but definitely owned, there’s no reason they should continue to be punished. People make mistakes. Sometimes, they made a lot of them, but others figured it out pretty quickly.
Influencer J.D. Delay has 58 felonies, but he cleaned up his life and now tries to help people as an addiction counselor. He was one of the ones who was a little slower to learn, but he was also hooked on drugs, so that happens.
Regardless, no one is served by his being disarmed now. When the prohibition might have mattered, he got guns all the time. It wasn’t an issue for him.
So non-violent felons who want their rights back should get them, and shame on any attorney who refuses to help simply because they don’t believe in gun rights restoration.
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