Gun rights in criminal law, securing rights after conviction

Well, the best estimates are that about 4% of prison inmates are innocent.
If plea bargaining didn't exist and all cases went to trial, it's hard to say if that number would be different or by how much.

 

And I'm suggesting a change to the law that would make it more fair.

I'm saying, don't rely on the ordinary system that determines whether we send persons to prison, for determining whether those same people lose lifetime civil rights.

Those are two different things and should not be automatically connected.

There are situations where we should send someone to prison for a few years but where we should still protect and safeguard their lifetime civil rights in the law.
What's so difficult to understand about that?

 

Maybe I should phrase it another way:
There are situations where we, as a society, should send persons to prison even though we may not be entirely sure they committed the crime.
That being said, we should take that into account when deciding whether they should lose lifetime rights, if we want to decide that those persons should no longer be subject to the guarantees of rights written into the law that everyone else is.

That is the question.

(And that is only half of my total argument here in this thread. The other half has to do with the much lower level crimes, even in cases where we know the person broke the law)

 

As far as things like automatic restoration goes, in my experience, the way legislatures typically do this is they latch onto a broad policy statement—something like “automatic restoration is a good thing”—and then they hash out those offenses which they believe should be excepted from the process.

If you are looking for lists of violent offenses, they do exist. Here, for example, is a short list of some (but not all) violent offenses in the Virginia Code:


For the purposes of this section, "act of violence" means (i) any one of the following violations of Chapter 4 (§ 18.2-30 et seq.) of Title 18.2:

a. First and second degree murder and voluntary manslaughter under Article 1 (§ 18.2-30 et seq.);

b. Mob-related felonies under Article 2 (§ 18.2-38 et seq.);

c. Any kidnapping or abduction felony under Article 3 (§ 18.2-47 et seq.);

d. Any malicious felonious assault or malicious bodily wounding under Article 4 (§ 18.2-51 et seq.);

e. Robbery under § 18.2-58 and carjacking under § 18.2-58.1;

f. Except as otherwise provided in § 18.2-67.5:2 or § 18.2-67.5:3, criminal sexual assault punishable as a felony under Article 7 (§ 18.2-61 et seq.); or

g. Arson in violation of § 18.2-77 when the structure burned was occupied or a Class 3 felony violation of § 18.2-79.

(ii) conspiracy to commit any of the violations enumerated in clause (i) of this section; and (iii) violations as a principal in the second degree or accessory before the fact of the provisions enumerated in clause (i) of this section.

B. Prior convictions shall include convictions under the laws of any state or of the United States for any offense substantially similar to those listed under "act of violence" if such offense would be a felony if committed in the Commonwealth.

Virginia Code § 19.2-297.1

Even this is by no means a complete list of “violent offenses” in Virginia. These offenses are listed here because this statute makes a conviction of any one of these offenses as a third offense—that is, the conviction follows after two or more prior offense convictions on the same list—result in a mandatory life sentence. Thus this list excludes—for example—capital murder because the punishment for that offense is already either life or death.

I just offer this as an example of some offenses you might start with if you wanted to have an automatic restoration process but not allow it to apply to some persons convicted of violent offenses.

If you wanted to make the restoration of rights—like the right to vote, to be a jury member, or the RKBA—automatic upon completion of confinement and/or post confinement probation, AND you wanted to exclude some felons from this automatic process, then a list like this is where your legislature would likely start carving out exceptions from automatic restoration.

In sum, the process itself is not terribly difficult. Your legislature would be going through the entire list of offenses and voting on which offenses should be excluded from automatic restoration—and if so then what, if any, process towards restoration they should have. And, if you add a new felony offense to the code next year, then because your restoration statute is a list of offense that don’t qualify there is no need to change your restoration statute unless you want this new felony to be added to the list of those exempt from the automatic restoration process—i.e. The new offense is included in the automatic restoration process unless you amend your restoration statute to add it to the “naughty” list.

Legislators deal with far more difficult statutory concepts than this. If you want an automatic process—including one with exceptions—then it is not the difficulty of drafting the legislation that is the problem. The problem is mustering the political will to do so.

 

Nonviolent offenders should not lose their second amendment rights. Most of these laws that make "items" found in the home a crime should not exist in the first place.