On August 20, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) published a final rule in the Federal Register that establishes application standards for those seeking relief from federal firearm disabilities under the Gun Control Act of 1968, as amended (GCA). The document, Application for Relief From Disabilities Imposed by Federal Laws With Respect to the Acquisition, Receipt, Transfer, Shipment, Transportation, or Possession of Firearms, is the final administrative action in a multi-step process that began in February 2025.
A timeline on the DOJ’s website shows the program will be rolled out in three waves. It launches on September 26, 2026, with an “invited” application pool. Then, a second wave of 5,000 applications drawn from the general public will be accepted beginning on November 4, 2026. A third wave of 500 applications will be open on January 4, 2027. This phase-in is apparently to help DOJ work out the kinks of the program, as the rule estimates some 330,000 applications are expected to be received each year.
Trump-appointed Pardon Attorney Ed Martin announced the new program in a video address. He stated:
To put [the] rule into effect, my team in the Pardon Office is hard at work to ensure that we can create and utilize an application process that balances public safety with the protection of your Second Amendment rights. Soon, we'll launch an online portal to accept all incoming applications. For those of you who are seeking relief, I know you're anxious to get started. And while you're waiting, I'd ask you to visit our website and find out more about what you'll need. That website is https://www.justice.gov/ffrr.
NRA-ILA has been reporting on each step of the program’s revival. Previously, restoration of rights under the GCA had been dormant for some 34 years because of congressional appropriation riders preventing the former administrator of the program, ATF, from spending funds to process applications.
But because the actual relief provision in 18 U.S.C. § 925(c) assigns responsibility for administering the program to the U.S. Attorney General, that official had the authority to revoke ATF’s responsibility for administering the program and assign it to a new DOJ component. In one of his first official acts in office, recently confirmed U.S. Attorney Todd Blanche presided over the rule’s publication and the program’s relaunch.
NRA-ILA had submitted extensive comments on DOJ’s proposed rule for application standards. We expressed concern that the proposal departed from the underlying statute, imposed a very bureaucratic and burdensome application process, and granted too much discretion to a potential anti-gun administration of the future, which could exploit the rules’ broad authorities to preferentially decide applications and even revoke previously granted relief.
Our comment pointed to parallels from the Biden-Harris administration, which passed an anti-gun regulation to ban private firearm sales that also used unauthorized presumptions (that rule has since been invalidated by multiple court decisions). Moreover, we explained how anti-gun states responded to pro-Second Amendment decisions by imposing extensive application requirements and extensive fees to effectively nullify the relief the courts granted. Thus, even if the Trump DOJ administered the process in good faith, there was no guarantee a future presidential administration hostile to the Second Amendment would follow suit.
Fortunately, DOJ took a number of our suggestions into consideration. It reduced the permanent presumptions of ineligibility that would have incorporated technical violations of the GCA to a period of 10 years after satisfaction of sentence. It allowed applicants who could not successfully gather all the rule’s extensive documentation to alternatively provide affidavits explaining the attempts they made and why they were unsuccessful. The final rule additionally limited the attorney general’s future revocation authority to situations where DOJ could demonstrate the application was fraudulently filed. A proposed requirement that the applicant notify the chief local law enforcement officer of the application’s filing, even if that official had nothing to do with the original basis of disqualification, was removed.
Unfortunately, other aspects of the final rule went in the other direction. A new requirement was added to provide information about arrests and prosecutions occurring overseas, even though the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that overseas convictions cannot lead to disqualifications under the GCA. It’s easy to see why, with many other countries lacking the constitutional protections and relatively professional and transparent judicial process of the U.S. Nevertheless, DOJ insisted all such information should be provided to inform DOJ’s decision-making. And, underscoring NRA-ILA’s concerns about the potential for the unauthorized fee to keep increasing, DOJ itself raised it 50% in the final rule over what it originally proposed.
Having said all that, the revival of the GCA’s restoration of rights provisions is a historic development that will hopefully right many wrongs and lead deserving applicants to regain their Second Amendment rights.
NRA-ILA encourages all potential applicants to visit DOJ’s website https://www.justice.gov/ffrr and start gathering the necessary documentation and affidavits to be ready to file as the process opens up to new applicants. Also, any firearm disabilities imposed under state laws will need to be dealt with separately under state restoration procedures. We will be closely monitoring DOJ’s progress on this initiative and providing updates on its implementation.
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