Attorney General Blanche has put 18 U.S.C. § 925(c) back into operation after a decades-long freeze. Eligible prohibited persons invited by the Justice Department may begin applying as of September 25 to restore federal firearm rights. The Federal Firearm Rights Restoration program is the administrative process that freeze had shut down. The statute remained in the United States Code the entire time.
Federal prohibitions on possessing firearms stayed in force while restoration sat dormant. A freeze is not a repeal. Section 925(c) still authorized the Attorney General to restore federal firearm rights. What was missing was a working application process. The Federal Firearm Rights Restoration program supplies that process for people the Department invites.
Invitation is the gate. The Justice Department is not taking applications from every person under a federal firearms disability. Only eligible prohibited persons invited by the Department may apply as of September 25. No invitation, no filing. That limit is how the Department is reopening § 925(c).
People under a federal firearms disability spent decades with § 925(c) on the books and no administrative way to use it. The new program restarts that statutory relief for invited applicants. It does not pretend the Second Amendment was suspended during the freeze. It applies a statute that never left the Code.
Restoration under this program returns federal firearm rights to those the Department approves. It is an administrative act under § 925(c). The Second Amendment already secures the right to keep and bear arms. The statute does not create that right and does not outrank it. Section 925(c) is the federal mechanism for lifting a disability the Code also imposes.
Oaths of office run to the Constitution first and to statutes second. Disarming statutes are the exception. They do not erase the right they restrict. Leaving restoration frozen while every prohibition stayed live inverted that order. Standing the program up puts § 925(c) back beside the prohibitory sections instead of treating it as dead letter.
Applications begin September 25. Invited eligible persons apply through the Justice Department's Federal Firearm Rights Restoration program. Those granted relief regain federal firearm rights under the revived § 925(c) process. The Department's next duty is to receive those applications and decide them under the statute, not to let another freeze bury a right the Constitution already names.
References
- https://www.justice.gov/ffrr
- https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-blanche-launches-new-process-restore-federal-firearm-rights
- https://federalcriminaldefenseattorney.com/federal-clemency-attorney/gun-rights-restoration/federal-firearm-rights-restoration/
- https://www.bellantoni-law.com/doj-restores-federal-firearm-rights-925c/