925(c) relief from firearms disabilities

What 925(c) relief asks the Attorney General to decide

925(c) relief is granted only if the danger and public-interest standard is established to the Attorney General's satisfaction. The 2026 rule at 28 CFR 107.50 adds presumptive denials. The table is a reading aid. The regulation is the text.

Does 925(c) relief have a deadline?

The statute does not say an application is granted on a date. The Department's questions page gives 30 days to finish an electronic application after it is started. It does not publish a number of days for the decision. The published clocks are collected in how long to get gun rights back. The papers to gather first are in how to restore gun rights.

What to ask an attorney

Ask whether a presumption in section 107.50 is still running, whether a prior denial creates a further presumption under section 107.70, and whether extraordinary circumstances are even the right frame for that record. This article does not decide that those circumstances are present.

Section 925(c) of title 18 is the federal statute that lets a person who is prohibited from possessing, shipping, transporting, or receiving firearms or ammunition apply for relief from the disabilities imposed by federal firearms laws. The statute says the Attorney General may grant that relief if it is established to the Attorney General's satisfaction that the circumstances regarding the disability, and the applicant's record and reputation, are such that the applicant 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. The standard is written as a judgment, not as a formula that produces a yes once a form is complete.

The same subsection says that a person whose application is denied may file a petition in the United States district court for the district in which the person resides for judicial review of the denial. The court may in its discretion admit additional evidence where failure to do so would result in a miscarriage of justice. Those are the statute's words. They describe review of a denial. They do not describe a court that grants relief because an agency never answered.

The program before the funding bar

The authority to decide applications was delegated, first inside the Treasury Department and later inside the Department of Justice, to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The preamble to the Department's 2026 final rule recounts that history. It says relief had been based on ad hoc determinations that were resource-intensive and inconsistent, and that were sometimes not consistent with public safety. Beginning in 1992, Congress prohibited ATF from using appropriated funds to process the applications. The preamble cites that bar as the reason the ATF program became unusable.

The Supreme Court's opinion in United States v. Bean quotes the rider in the Treasury, Postal Service, and General Government Appropriations Act, 1993, Public Law 102-393. The quoted language says that none of the funds appropriated therein may be used to investigate or act upon applications for relief from federal firearms disabilities under 18 U.S.C. 925(c). The Court noted that the bar had continued in later appropriations. The Department's 2026 preamble says budget riders from 1992 through January 2026 restricted ATF from spending funds for investigations under section 925(c).

Congress did not, in that rider, delete section 925(c) from the code. A reader who says "925(c) was repealed in 1992" is describing a different event from the one the statute book and Bean describe.

United States v. Bean

Bean had asked ATF for relief. ATF returned the petition and explained that, since October 1992, its appropriation prohibited spending funds to investigate or act upon the applications. Bean argued that the failure to act was a denial, so a district court could review it and grant relief. The Supreme Court disagreed. It held that "denial" means an actual decision denying the application, not silence caused by a funding bar. Judicial review under the statute, the Court said, cannot occur without a dispositive decision by the agency. The case is United States v. Bean, 537 U.S. 71 (2002).

Bean explains why, for many years, there was a statute on the books and no working individual application at ATF. It does not say that courts may never review a real denial. It says inaction is not that denial.

The 2025 proposal and the 2026 final rule

On July 22, 2025, the Department published a notice of proposed rulemaking at 90 FR 34394. The proposal described criteria for granting relief and said the Attorney General was building an approach that did not depend on ATF processing the applications. The final rule was published in the Federal Register on August 20, 2026, as document 2026-16981, at 91 FR 54054. The action line is "Final rule." The dates line says the rule is effective September 21, 2026, and that starting on that date the Department will begin soliciting applications from individuals. The docket is OAG191, AG Order No. 7109-2026, RIN 1105-AB78. The rule amends title 27 and title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations, including a new 28 CFR Part 107, "Relief from Disabilities Under the Gun Control Act."

The preamble explains why the Department believes the ATF funding riders do not forbid this rule. It says the rider is a proviso attached to ATF's appropriation, that it refers to "the funds appropriated herein," and that the stated purpose in the 1992 committee reports was to preserve ATF agent time. Senate Report 102-353 is quoted for the line that the hours spent on these applications would be better used to address violent crime. The preamble also says the rule does not transfer an ATF function, because processing section 925(c) applications is a statutory function of the Attorney General that ATF once performed only by delegation, and that ATF has long been barred from performing. Those are the Department's legal reasons. They are published so the public can read them. They are not a court judgment in a case brought against the rule.

What the rule actually requires the Attorney General to decide

Section 107.20 repeats the statutory standard: the Attorney General may grant relief if the applicant establishes, to the Attorney General's satisfaction, that the applicant will not be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety and that granting relief would not be contrary to the public interest. The section lists information the Attorney General may consider, including criminal history, the seriousness of prior conduct, behavior during a sentence, time since the sentence ended, substance use, protection orders, threats, mental health, information from local law enforcement, and whether the person's circumstances show that failing to grant relief would infringe Second Amendment rights. The list is permissive. It is not a score sheet published as a guarantee.

Section 107.50 states presumptive disqualifications. For some serious violent felonies, including conduct involving death, rape, kidnapping, robbery, and similar offenses listed in the section, and for a felony in which the person brandished or discharged a firearm, the rule says applications will be denied absent extraordinary circumstances. Other paragraphs set a 10-year presumption for specified drug-trafficking and firearms offenses and for a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, and a 5-year presumption for other felonies and for certain misdemeanor violent offenses. A person who is a fugitive, who is subject to a section 922(g)(8) order, who is an unlawful user of a controlled substance as the rule defines that term, or who must register as a sex offender because of an offense that itself disqualified the person under the Gun Control Act, is also presumptively denied while that status continues. "Presumptively" and "absent extraordinary circumstances" are the rule's words. They are not a promise that the presumption is the end of every case, and they are not a promise that the absence of a presumption produces a grant.

Section 107.30 limits the grant. Relief covers the federal Gun Control Act disability for which relief is sought. It does not extend to a state-law prohibition. A new disability after the grant is not covered.

Section 107.40 authorizes a fee and says the fee may be waived or reduced because of indigency. The preamble says the Department set the fee at $30 after comments on a proposed $20 fee. The Department's questions page, updated September 9, 2026, also says the application fee is $30 and that fingerprint and record fees may be extra and vary by place. The same Department page describes a staged opening: invited applicants, then a public opening on November 4, 2026 for the first 5,000 people, first come, first served, then a further opening on January 4, 2027 tied to testing the fee portal. The program home page lists September 25, 2026 for invited candidates, November 4, 2026 for the first 5,000, and January 4, 2027 for 500 more candidates and the start of fee collection. Those dates are the Department's public schedule. They can be changed by the Department. This article does not predict that a slot will be open on a later day.

The questions page says that if a person starts the electronic application, the person has 30 days to finish it, and that fingerprints are taken after the first part of the application, through a participating post office, using a code sent by email. The rule at section 107.10 also lists an electronic fingerprint scan or two FBI fingerprint cards among the application contents. Read the current Department instructions and the rule together before relying on a step. The preparation article walks through the document list in the rule.

What this article does not say

It does not say that any person will be granted relief. It does not say that extraordinary circumstances are present or absent in any case. It does not say that a state restoration is unnecessary, or that it is sufficient. The Department's questions page says a state restoration of rights does not remove disabilities imposed by a federal conviction, and that a state restoration of a state conviction also may not remove federal disabilities. That is a warning against a shortcut, not a map of any state's statute.

Rights Restore can help organize a packet. It does not file the application and it does not decide it. The beta page describes that limited role.