When the news dropped that a former federal attorney claimed she was fired for refusing to put Mel Gibson's name on a list of people who might get their gun rights back, the usual suspects howled. Mel Gibson was guilty of BadThink in addition to his guilty plea for domestic violence. He simply couldn't be trusted with a gun.
But the truth of the matter is that, yeah, he actually should get it back.
See, one of the big problems with our prohibition on guns for people convicted of certain crimes is that it's a lifetime ban. Up until recently, there wasn't even really a way to get your gun rights back, no matter how much you cleaned up your life.
After reading in Monday's New York Times story about actor Mel Gibson's failure to have his gun rights restored, I asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt at the press briefing that afternoon about the administration's take on restoring gun rights for offenders who have served their sentences.
The story interested me because over the years I've talked to federal offenders who turned their lives around and sought presidential pardons to erase their criminal records. Some have told me it was particularly important to them to be able to own a gun for personal protection. It didn't matter which state they lived in. Even decades after they served their sentences, they could not legally keep a gun in their own home.
I want this to be clear: I believe in a prohibition on gun possession for those convicted of domestic violence, felony or misdemeanor — except there's no statute of limitations, no end to the removal of a right many see as essential for their personal safety.
And then there are other issues involved, which the author of this piece gets into.
See, Gibson and others pled guilty to a misdemeanor domestic violence charge, and that's where things get problematic.
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It's the misdemeanor domestic violence charge — not the taped antisemitic arrest rant — that prevents Gibson, or anyone else with such a record, from qualifying for legal gun ownership. Gibson is not alone. “A lot of people don't know they signed their rights away for the rest of their life” when they cut a plea deal, Aidan Johnston, director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America, told me. They know they cut a deal that spares them from jail, but they are probably not aware of the lifetime consequence of being on the FBI no-gun list. Others in that group include Americans who have been dishonorably discharged from the military, have renounced their citizenship or have been adjudicated as “mental defective.”
“Once you're on this list,” Johnston noted, “you can never get a gun.”
Exactly.
See, part of the problem is people may enter a guilty plea on a misdemeanor domestic violence charge because the penalties aren't presented as all that severe and, frankly, fighting any kind of legal battle is expensive. For someone like Gibson, it also spares the media circus that would surround any kind of trial. So, he signed on for the plea agreement.
That was in 2011.
In the 13 and a half years since, Gibson has kept his nose clean. He's making movies and hasn't made headlines in the tabloids. He is, from all outward appearances, reformed.
But some people don't want people reformed. They don't want people rehabilitated. They want them to be punished for a lifetime for a misdemeanor. They want them treated as second-class citizens for life, even as many want to make it easier for people convicted of far worse crimes to vote sooner.
So yeah, I think Mel Gibson should get his gun rights back, but not because he's Mel Gibson.
He should get his gun rights back because people in his position have every right to expect their right to keep and bear arms returned to them.
If he was so evil, then why didn't the prosecutor stick with felony charges? Because he wasn't a threat and everyone knew it.
Millions of other men are in similar positions. It's time to end the stupidity.
