The state’s toughened voting rights restoration policy requires people convicted of a felony to get their gun rights restored before they can become eligible to cast a ballot again, Tennessee’s elections office said Tuesday, confirming a mandate that officials had been debating internally.
Last summer, election officials interpreted a state Supreme Court ruling as requiring that all convicted felons applying for reinstated voting rights first get their full citizenship rights restored by a judge or show they were pardoned. Voting rights advocates have argued the legal interpretation was way off-base.
The change, instituted by elections officials in July, has since halted almost all voting rights restorations: More than 60 people were denied and just one person approved. In the nearly seven months before it was implemented, about 200 people were approved and 120 denied, according to data from the secretary of state’s office.
State Elections Coordinator Mark Goins revealed the gun rights decision Tuesday when asked about it by The Associated Press. Pointing to the court’s ruling, he reiterated that someone’s full citizenship rights must be restored before they can regain the right to vote, and added, “Under the Tennessee Constitution, the right to bear arms is a right of citizenship.”
As recently as last month, Tennessee election officials expressed uncertainty about restoring the vote to convicted felons who hadn’t regained their gun rights, saying in court depositions that they were holding up 12 such applications while consulting with the state attorney general’s office.
All Tennessee felony drug crimes and felonies involving violence specifically strip away someone’s gun rights, and high-level action such as a pardon by a governor is needed to restore their voting rights, according to the Campaign Legal Center.
The center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy group, had already filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the state over its previous voting rights restoration process — before the new rules even took place — arguing that it amounted to the suppression of Black voters.
The suit argues that the state fails to make clear which officials can sign the necessary forms, provides no criteria for denial, and offers no avenue for appeal. Tennessee also requires that applicants are up to date on restitution, court costs and child support payments. The state also already bars voting rights restoration for certain categories of crimes, if they were committed within certain date ranges.
The lawsuit was scheduled to go to trial last November. The policy change sparked by the high court’s decision spurred delays in court, making it unlikely that a trial will take place until after this year’s elections.
Despite the Tennessee legislature’s clear intent to create meaningful pathways for voting rights restoration, the Elections Division, with help from the Attorney General’s office, continues to twist the law into tortured knots to prevent the 475,000 Tennesseans, including over 20% of voting age Black Tennesseans, with past felony convictions from voting,” said Blair Bowie, director of Campaign Legal Center’s Restore Your Vote.
In its June decision, the high court ruled against a man who sought to register to vote in the state after receiving clemency for a crime committed decades ago in Virginia. The court ruled that he still had to go through the process of restoring his voting rights.
Though Tennessee elections officials have acknowledged that the court ruling applied only to the specific circumstances of that case, they have said the wording was close enough to the requirements under state law to necessitate the broad policy change.
Even as lawmakers returned to work at the Capitol early this month, it remained unclear whether supermajority Republicans would push to return to the old reinstatement system. Senate Speaker Randy McNally, for one, would prefer even more restrictions, showing how tough it is to sell the issue in Tennessee.
“Overall, I’m not in favor of felons voting. I think they’ve committed a serious crime, serious offense against the state,” McNally told the AP earlier this month. “And until they’re out of jail and either been pardoned or exonerated for what they did, then they forfeit that right.”
The only person approved for voting rights restoration under the new system didn’t hit any snags in court, at least. A judge restored his “full rights of citizenship” in September, and the state elections office restored his voting rights in November.
Criminal defense attorney John Pellegrin said he helped his client get a judge to reinstate his citizenship rights, but wasn’t involved in helping him submit voting restoration documents. The new stricter requirements were news to him.
“I didn’t really find out about the change until after we had already done it,” Pellegrin told the AP.
The Second Amendment Foundation and a District Attorney in Pennsylvania have filed a federal lawsuit against Attorney General Merrick Garland, the heads of the FBI and ATF, and the U.S. Government, challenging the federal prohibition on gun ownership by medical marijuana users.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. In addition to Garland, the lawsuit names FBI Director Christopher Wray and ATF Director Steven Dettelbach as defendants. SAF is joined by Warren County, Pa. District Attorney Robert Greene, who has served in that office since 2013 and currently possesses a medical marijuana ID card under Pennsylvania law. They are represented by attorneys Adam Kraut, who serves as SAF executive director, and Joshua Prince of Bechtelsville, Pa.
The lawsuit challenges restrictions contained in 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(3), (d)(3), which prohibit firearms purchases and possession by persons who use marijuana or other controlled substances.
“Medicinal marijuana has been adopted by 38 states despite federal inaction on the issue,” said Kraut, who is also a practicing attorney in Pennsylvania. “With the increasing acceptance of medical cannabis, millions of Americans are forced to choose between the exercise of their Second Amendment rights or treating their symptoms with a substance that disenfranchises them from their constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms.
Such a choice is incompatible with the constitution and finds no basis in this country’s history and tradition. We look forward to vindicating the rights of medical marijuana users.”
“The use of medical marijuana should not translate to an automatic surrender of one’s Second Amendment rights,” added SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The current restrictions unquestionably and arbitrarily infringe on the right to keep and bear arms, and the restriction lacks any director or analogous historical support, as required by the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen ruling.”
Second Amendment Foundation
The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 720,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.
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From SGAmmo – Another Ammo Shortage
News from Shotshow 2024: I just got home from 4 days in Las Vegas at the shotshow, where I met with the people from the factories we work with, factory sales people, factory directors and owners, importers, etc.
The big point of discussion seemed to be shortness in supply for nitrocellulose, which is the raw material used to make gunpowder and other propellants and explosives. Based on these conversations, the issue seems to be based on 2 factors, decreased availability in the supply chain and increased demand for the manufacturing of military ordnance.
Getting into the details and a little more, a huge percentage of the nitrocellulose used to make gunpowder historically came from China and Russia, however according to my conversations with industry partners, the Chinese manufacturers who historically were the biggest suppliers at over 30% of the market share are no longer willing to ship raw nitrocellulose to the USA or NATO member countries in attempt to reduce the USA & NATO’s ability to supply Ukrainian forces with artillery shells, and of course Russia who historically was the 2nd biggest supplier is out of the supply chain as well.
This decrease in supply in raw material has gunpowder manufacturers in the USA raising prices dramatically and cutting off many of the smaller ammo manufacturers.
The 2nd part of this issue is the demand for military ordnance, like 155mm artillery shells that use huge quantities gunpowder propellants, and the gunpowder manufacturers switching production to this type of gunpowder with what supply of nitrocellulose they do get.
The first reason is that they always put the US government’s needs before those of the commercial market, and the second reason is that it is simply much more profitable to manufacturer military ordnance than it is small caliber ammunition, so they get a much more profitable price manufacturing powder for artillery shells.
In conclusion, while most of the factories seem to have gunpowder stockpiled today, this issue is expected to catch up to them no later than the summer of 2024 and possibly within a few months, and when it does it will mean the factories will be capable of producing much less small caliber ammunition to sell to the US commercial market.
If demand for ammo is low to moderate, you may not see a big change, but if demand were to go way up as it does periodically, the factories will not be able to ramp up capacity to fill that demand. In my opinion, a lot could go wrong in the commercial ammo supply chain in 2024 and it would be wise to stock up sooner than later as 2024 price increases have just started to set in on just a handful of select items so far, and availability is still good which has held prices down temporarily.
