Application for Relief From Disabilities Imposed by Federal Laws With Respect to the Acquisition, Receipt, Transfer, Shipment, Transportation, or Possession of Firearms

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE <CFR>28 CFR Parts 25 and 107</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. OAG191; AG Order No. 6336-2025]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1105-AB78</RIN> <SUBJECT>Application for Relief From Disabilities Imposed by Federal Laws With Respect to the Acquisition, Receipt, Transfer, Shipment, Transportation, or Possession of Firearms</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Department of Justice. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Department of Justice (“the Department”) proposes to implement criteria to guide determinations for granting relief from disabilities imposed by Federal laws with respect to the acquisition, receipt, transfer, shipment, transportation, or possession of firearms. In accordance with certain firearms laws and the Second Amendment of the Constitution, the criteria are designed to ensure the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms is not unduly infringed, that those granted relief are not likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety, and that granting such relief would not be contrary to the public interest. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be postmarked and electronic comments must be submitted on or before October 20, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments, identified by docket number (OAG191), by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. Commenters should be aware that the electronic Federal Docket Management System will not accept comments after 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on the last day of the comment period. • <E T="03">Mailed Comments:</E> Paper comments that duplicate an electronic submission are discouraged. Should you wish to mail a paper comment in lieu of submitting comments electronically, it should be sent via regular or express mail to: Kira Gillespie, Deputy Pardon Attorney, Office of the Pardon Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20530. Hand-delivered comments will not be accepted. Comments submitted in a manner other than the ones listed above, including emails or letters sent to Department officials, will not be considered comments on the proposed rule and will not receive a response from the Department. As required by 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(4), a summary of this rule may be found in the docket for this rulemaking at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Kira Gillespie, Deputy Pardon Attorney, Office of the Pardon Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20530; telephone: (202) 514-9251. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Public Participation</HD> Interested persons are invited to participate in this rulemaking by submitting written data, views, or arguments on all aspects of this rule. The Department specifically requests comments regarding the felony offenses that should be presumptively disqualifying; the felony offenses that should be presumptively disqualifying until a specific length of time; and the appropriate length of time after which the former offenses should not be presumptively disqualifying. The Department also invites comments that relate to the economic or federalism effects that might result from this rule. Comments that will provide the most assistance to the Department in developing these procedures will reference a specific portion of the rule, explain the reason for any recommended change, and include data, information, or authority that supports such recommended change. Comments must be submitted in English. Each submitted comment should include the agency name and reference Docket No. OAG 191. All properly received comments are considered part of the public record and generally may be made available for public inspection at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Such information includes personally identifying information (such as name, address, etc.) voluntarily submitted by the commenter. The Department may, in its discretion, withhold from public viewing information provided in comments that it determines may impact the privacy of an individual or is offensive. But all submissions may be posted, without change, to the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Therefore, you may wish to limit the amount of personal information you include in your submission. For additional information, please read the Privacy Act notice that is available via the link in the footer of <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> If you want to submit personally identifying information (such as your name, address, etc.) as part of your comment, but do not want it to be posted online, you must include the phrase “PERSONALLY IDENTIFYING INFORMATION” in the first paragraph of your comment and identify what information you want redacted. The redacted personally identifying information will be placed in the agency's public docket file but not posted online. If you want to submit confidential business information as part of your comment but do not want it to be posted online, you must include the phrase “CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS INFORMATION” in the first paragraph of your comment. You also must prominently identify confidential business information to be redacted within the comment. If a comment has so much confidential business information that it cannot be effectively redacted, all or part of that comment may not be posted on <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> The redacted confidential business information will not be placed in the public docket file. To inspect the agency's public docket file in person, you must make an appointment with the agency. Please see the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> paragraph above for agency contact information. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> The federal Gun Control Act seeks “broadly to keep firearms away from the persons Congress classified as potentially irresponsible and dangerous.”  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Accordingly, the Gun Control Act prohibits firearm possession by categories of persons who, as a general matter, pose a danger to others if armed. For example, the prohibition in 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1) on firearm possession by felons ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> persons convicted of crimes punishable for a term exceeding one year) is based on Congress's conclusion that individuals “convicted of serious crimes” can generally “be expected to misuse” firearms. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">Barrett</E> v. <E T="03">United States,</E> 423 U.S. 212, 218 (1976); <E T="03">see Lewis</E> v. <E T="03">United States,</E> 445 U.S. 55, 67 (1980) (observing that “[t]he federal gun laws” are designed “to keep firearms away from potentially dangerous persons”). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">Dickerson</E> v. <E T="03">New Banner Inst., Inc.,</E> 460 U.S. 103, 119 (1983). </FTNT> At the same time, the Gun Control Act includes a mechanism where a “person who is prohibited from possessing, shipping, transporting, or receiving firearms or ammunition may make application to the Attorney General for relief from the disabilities imposed by Federal laws with respect to the acquisition, receipt, transfer, shipment, transportation, or possession of firearms[.]” 18 U.S.C. 925(c). Congress, in enacting section 925(c), recognized that a subset of persons subject to the Gun Control Act may be able to make an individualized showing both that they “will not be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety” if allowed to possess firearms and that granting relief from federal firearm disabilities “would not be contrary to the public interest.” <E T="03">Id.</E> Granting such relief in appropriate cases would, among other things, protect the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms in a manner that is consistent with public safety. Section 925(c) thus provides a mechanism for the Attorney General to relieve otherwise-prohibited persons from federal firearm disabilities if they can show that they are likely to possess firearms safely, while simultaneously ensuring that violent or dangerous persons remain subject to the prohibitions in the Gun Control Act. Before 2025, the process for determining who qualified for relief pursuant to section 925(c) was delegated to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (“ATF”) by an Assistant Secretary within the Department of the Treasury, see 27 CFR 178.144, and, most recently, after ATF was transferred to the Department of Justice by the Homeland Security Act, by the Attorney General. <E T="03">See</E> 27 CFR 478.144 (withdrawn). Problems arose, however, in the administration of section 925(c). ATF had few clear criteria to guide its assessment of whether applicants would pose a danger to public safety. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> ATF's <E T="03">ad hoc</E> determinations led to significant public-safety concerns. Between 1985 and 1990, ATF granted relief to approximately half of applicants who did not drop out of the process. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> One 1992 study found that, out of 100 randomly selected felons to whom ATF granted relief, five had been convicted for felony sexual assault, 11 for burglary, 13 for distribution of narcotics, and 4 for homicide. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> Another analysis revealed that ATF granted relief, for example, to an applicant who had fatally shot his cousin while intoxicated and to an applicant who untruthfully failed to disclose his nine-year-old convictions for burglary and brandishing a firearm. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> Unsurprisingly, given that applicants received relief even after committing viole ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 86k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━