The Misleading Rhetoric Around Virginia’s Rights Restoration Referendum

Virginia felons could soon automatically regain the right to vote once their sentences have been completed, if voters in the Old Dominion approve a referendum that will be on the ballot this fall. 

The talking points and even AI summaries about the referendum, though, are incredibly misleading. For instance, if you ask Google Gemini what the referendum is all about, you get this reply:

If passed, this constitutional amendment will automatically restore voting and civil rights to citizens upon their release from incarceration for a felony, removing the decision from the governor’s sole discretion. 

A recent editorial in the Charlottesville Daily Press made similar claims. 

ate last month, Gov. Abigail Spanberger announced that she had restored the civil rights, including the ability to vote, to some 66,000 Virginians since her January inauguration. These are individuals who were convicted of felonies, completed their sentences and petitioned the governor to reclaim the full measure of their citizenship.

While it is right that she did so, and the effort to extend that second chance is certainly worthy of praise, no Virginian should have to depend on a governor to regain their rights after completing a criminal punishment. Voters will have the opportunity to rectify that in November, when a constitutional amendment to make that process automatic appears on the ballot.

How to handle the integration of those convicted of the most serious crimes has been a topic of considerable debate in Virginia for generations. The commonwealth is one of only three states — Iowa and Kentucky are the others — which permanently strip away essential civil rights — to vote, serve on a jury or as a notary public, or run for office — from felons, only returning them when, or if, a governor grants them.

Based on this, one would think that the civil right to keep and bear arms would also be automatically restored under the referendum’s language. That right is just as essential as the right to vote, serve on a jury or as a notary public, or become a political candidate, after all. 

That is not the case, however. Under Virginia law, gun ownership isn’t treated as a political civil right like the right to vote or serve on a jury. In order to have your Second Amendment rights restored (or more accurately, to have your rights under Article 1, Section 13 of the Virginia Constitution restored) you must first have your political civil rights restored. After that has happened, you must then petition your local circuit court or the circuit court in the jurisdiction in which you were convicted. The court conducts a review of the petition and notifies the local Commonwealth’s Attorney. If there are objections or concerns, a judge can hold a hearing before issuing their decision. 

If the referendum passes, felons in Virginia will automatically be one step closer to regaining their gun rights once their sentences have been served, but they’ll still have to go through the second and final step of petitioning the courts before they can legally possess a firearm. 

I’m not an attorney, but it seems to me that if this referendum does pass in November, it opens the door to a legal challenge to Virginia’s firearm rights restoration process. The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that the Second Amendment isn’t a second-class right, but that’s how it’s treated under Virginia law. 

SCOTUS has also suggested that individuals who’ve been adjudicated as “dangerous” can be deprived of their Second Amendment rights, but so far it has not said whether all felony convictions are proof of dangerousness, or whether that would specifically apply to crimes of violence. Does a violent crime committed 30 years ago automatically bar someone from owning a gun, or can that dangerousness fade over time if there is no further evidence of lawbreaking? 

The Court has bypassed multiple challenges to 922(g)(1) in recent years, so there’s no guarantee that approaching the same question from a different angle would achieve a different result. Still, if every other right is automatically restored upon the completion of a sentence, I think the continued deprivation of the right to keep and bear arms raises significant questions under the Second and Fourteenth Amendments. 

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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