32 CONVICTED FELONS GOT GUN RIGHTS RESTORED UNDER TRUMP—MORE TO COME
ATTORNEY GENERAL PAM BONDI INVITES REFORMED FELONS TO APPLY FOR RESTORATION OF SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS
The author, a convicted felon, bonding with his step-son shooting air guns in New York’s Adirondack mountains, July 2025. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
MALONE, NEW YORK Feb. 14, 2026 EXCLUSIVE
The Trump Administration has given gun rights back to at least 32 convicted felons in the past year and is inviting more to apply to also have their gun rights restored.
22 had their constitutional right to bear arms reinstated by Attorney General Pam Bondi in the first five weeks of 2026 alone, according to court filings submitted last Monday in a potentially precedent-setting Second Amendment lawsuit filed by a former felon seeking restoration of his gun rights.
That's on top of 10 more felons who were given their gun rights back by Bondi in 2025, according to previous filings in the same case.
Bondi is inviting more felons to apply to have their gun rights restored now, even before a new rule finalizing a uniform procedure for such applications is finalized, according to the government lawyer who represents Bondi in the lawsuit. The case, called Williams v. Attorney General et al., is currently before a federal appeals court based in Philadelphia for decision.
"Even in the interim, although there isn't a rule setting out a framework under which these applications are processed, the Attorney General has invited people to apply, civil litigants who have filed lawsuits against the government, have been invited to apply," Assistant Solicitor General Vivek Suri told the court, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, during oral argument in the case on Wednesday.
In addition, Bondi is considering an untold number of additional applications.
"I know that there are at least some applications that we are still investigating and have not acted upon," Suri added. "I expect the numbers will rise significantly."
The informal process is not open to the general public at this time, Suri clarified. Its only available to those who have filed lawsuits seeking restoration of their gun rights or applied to Pres. Donald J. Trump for a pardon. It won't be available to the general public until the uniform procedure for deciding such applications is finalized.
Suri couldn't say exactly when that would be, but strongly suggested it would be before the end of 2026.
According to last Monday's court filing, the 22 felons who had their gun rights restored "did not have recent convictions and did not have any convictions or arrests of concern since completing any sentences, as verified by records and identity checks."
The lawsuit the federal appeals court is deciding was filed by a Pennsylvania man, Edward Williams, who had his gun rights revoked because of a 2005 Driving Under the Influence conviction. At issue in the case is a 1968 federal law barring convicted felons from purchasing or possessing firearms and ammunition. Williams argues the law, Section 922(g)(1) of Title 18 of the US Code, violates his Second Amendment right to bear arms.
Williams does not allege the law is unconstitutional on its face so that it must be totally struck down. He only argues that 18 USC § 922(g)(1) is unconstitutional as applied to him. That means that, even if Williams wins, the law will still stand and be effective against everyone else. It just won't apply to him.
The US Department of Justice, which is defending Attorney General Bondi against the lawsuit, does not take a position of whether the law is unconstitutional as applied to Williams.
Instead, the Justice Department contends Williams' current lawsuit should be dismissed because another federal law, 18 USC § 925(c), allows Bondi to restore the gun rights of convicted felons. The Department says Williams must first apply to the Attorney General for that relief—and be denied—before suing in federal court.
Under that law, § 925(c), a person who is federally disqualified from possessing firearms “may make application to the Attorney General for relief from the disabilities.” To qualify, the applicant must establish she or he "will not be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety and that the granting of the relief would not be contrary to the public interest.”
18 USC § 925(c) specifically allows felons whose applications are denied to sue in federal court "for a judicial review of such denial."
While Congress enacted § 925(c) in 1968, in 1992 Congress banned the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms—which at the time was the federal agency that considered § 925(c) applications—from spending money appropriated to it by Congress to consider such applications. Even though, on paper, convicted felons had the legal right to apply to have their gun rights restored, in practice that right did not exist at all after 1992.
On July 18, 2025, the Department of Justice published proposed new rules to revive § 925(c) applications and restore gun rights to qualified felons who are no longer dangerous.
"For too long, countless Americans with criminal histories have been permanently disenfranchised from exercising the right to keep and bear arms—a right every bit as constitutionally enshrined as the right to vote, the right to free speech, and the right to free exercise of religion—irrespective of whether they actually pose a threat," Attorney General Bondi said in a news release, also published July 18. "No longer."
The time for the public to comment on the proposed rules expired Oct. 16.
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice told The Free Lance News in January it would not comment on when the new rules would be finalized.
During oral argument before the federal appeals court on Wednesday, Suri, the Government's lawyer, said the Justice Department was reviewing "thousands" of public comments it received during the 90-day public comment period on the proposal and by law is required to consider before finalizing the proposed rules.
"I can't give the court a specific deadline about when that process will be concluded," Suri said. But, he added, it would likely be "by the time the court ultimately decides the case."
It typically takes between three and six months for a federal appeals court to issue a decision after hearing oral argument.
Williams' attorney Joshua Prince told the judges it didn't matter when the new § 925(c) rules would be finalized because former felons who've completed their sentences are entitled under the Second Amendment to possess guns. Full stop. The Second Amendment prohibits the Government from requiring them to prove they're no longer dangerous to get their gun rights back, as § 925(c) requires.
"That is consistent with our history and tradition," Prince argued. "The government hasn't pointed to anything, that shows that once the individual is released from custody, and no longer under probation, parole, supervised release, that they can continue to be divested of a constitutional right."
"This challenge," Prince added, "is in relation to whether, constitutionally, the government can even deny them to begin with.”
(Full disclosure: this reporter is suing Attorney General Pam Bondi for restoration of his gun rights.)
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