Gun rights restoration timeline

How to use this gun rights restoration timeline

A gun rights restoration timeline is useful only if each date can be opened. The sections below cite the public law or the opinion. This short index is the version to keep beside the longer narrative.

What to ask an attorney

Ask which row, if any, changed the law that applies to a particular conviction, and which row is only background. A date on a timeline is not a date on a judgment. The judgment still has to be ordered from the clerk, as the how to restore gun rights article describes.

A timeline is only as good as its dates. The dates below are taken from the public law, the opinion, or the government page linked in this series. If a colorful story about restoration did not come with a date in one of those places, it is not on this list. The history article explains the statutes. This page is the sequence.

1968: the modern federal chapter

October 22, 1968. Public Law 90-618 is enacted. Its first section says it may be cited as the Gun Control Act of 1968. It rewrites chapter 44 of title 18, including the licensing rules and the prohibited-person rules that later amendments would reshape. Section 925 is part of that chapter. Subsection 925(c) is the relief application: a person who is prohibited may apply, and the Attorney General, originally through a delegation, may grant relief under the danger and public-interest standard.

December 16, 1968. Section 105 of the Gun Control Act says the rewritten chapter takes effect on this date, except as that section provides. Citing only October 22 as the day every prohibition started skips the act's own effective-date section.

1986: a major amendment, not a general amnesty

May 19, 1986. Public Law 99-308, the Firearms Owners' Protection Act, is enacted. It amends chapter 44 and states congressional findings that additional legislation was needed to correct existing firearms statutes and to reaffirm the 1968 finding about law-abiding citizens. The act changes the shape of the code a reader sees today. It is not a statute that restores firearms rights to every person with a conviction. Relief remains an application under section 925(c), not an automatic consequence of the 1986 act.

1992 and 2002: the application process stops at ATF

1. Congress begins attaching an appropriations rider that bars the use of funds appropriated in the act to investigate or act upon applications for relief under section 925(c). Bean quotes the fiscal year 1993 Treasury appropriation, Public Law 102-393, and describes ATF's letter that "since October 1992" it could not spend funds on the applications. The Department's 2026 preamble says riders of this kind continued through January 2026 and were addressed to ATF.

December 10, 2002. The Supreme Court decides United States v. Bean, 537 U.S. 71. ATF's failure to act is not a "denial." A district court therefore does not acquire the judicial-review power that section 925(c) gives after a denial. For practical purposes, an individual applicant could not get a federal decision out of ATF, and could not treat the silence as a no that a judge could reverse.

1994 through 1996: domestic-violence categories

The restraining-order prohibition now in section 922(g)(8) enters federal law in the mid-1990s, before the misdemeanor-conviction ban. This timeline does not pin that insertion to a day beyond what the history article can support. The misdemeanor ban has a clear enactment date.

September 30, 1996. Public Law 104-208 is enacted. The ATF temporary rule implementing it says the law adds the misdemeanor crime of domestic violence as a firearms disability and that the amendments take effect upon enactment. That category is now section 922(g)(9). The definition, including the force element, the relationship element, and the expungement exception, is section 921(a)(33). The Lautenberg article is the longer account. United States v. Castleman, 572 U.S. 157 (2014), later interprets "physical force" in that definition.

1994, 1998, and 2007: how a conviction drops out of the federal definition

May 16, 1994. Beecham v. United States, 511 U.S. 368, holds that restoration of civil rights under section 921(a)(20) is determined under the law of the convicting jurisdiction. A state restoration does not erase a federal conviction.

June 22, 1998. Caron v. United States, 524 U.S. 308, holds that if a restoration expressly provides that the person may not possess firearms, the convictions still count, even when state law allows some firearms and the prosecution is about those other firearms.

1. Logan v. United States, 552 U.S. 23 (2007), holds that "restored" does not mean "never lost." The civil rights the Court discusses are the rights to vote, hold office, and serve on a jury.

These three cases are not restoration programs. They are interpretations of the sentence in section 921(a)(20) that says when a conviction is not a conviction for the firearms chapter. The years above for Beecham and Caron are the decision dates printed on the opinions. Logan is cited by its reported year. The article on automatic and application-based restoration explains them without listing states.

2008, 2010, 2022, and 2024: the Second Amendment cases people quote

June 26, 2008. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, holds that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep a handgun at home for self-defense, and strikes down the District's handgun ban and its inoperability requirement. The opinion says it should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on possession by felons and the mentally ill.

June 28, 2010. McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, holds that the right recognized in Heller applies to the states.

June 23, 2022. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, holds that the right covers carrying a handgun in public for self-defense and strikes down New York's proper-cause licensing rule. The Court adopts a text-and-history test.

June 21, 2024. United States v. Rahimi holds that a person a court has found to pose a credible threat to another's physical safety may be temporarily disarmed, under the restraining-order statute, consistent with the Second Amendment.

July 2, 2024. In Garland v. Range, No. 23-374, the Supreme Court grants review, vacates the Third Circuit's 2023 judgment, and remands for further consideration in light of Rahimi.

December 23, 2024. The Third Circuit decides Range again, Range v. Attorney General, 124 F.4th 218, and again rules for Bryan Range on an as-applied challenge to section 922(g)(1). The opinion says the decision is narrow. It is not a national end to the felon-in-possession statute.

None of these dates is the date a federal relief application is granted. They are the dates of opinions about the right. The court-cases article says what each opinion did and did not do.

2025 and 2026: the Department republishes a process

July 22, 2025. The Department of Justice publishes a notice of proposed rulemaking at 90 FR 34394, describing criteria for section 925(c) relief and a shift away from ATF processing.

August 20, 2026. The final rule is published at 91 FR 54054, Federal Register document 2026-16981. It adds 28 CFR Part 107. The preamble sets an application fee of $30 and explains why the Department believes the ATF appropriations riders do not block a process run outside ATF.

September 21, 2026. The final rule's dates line says the rule is effective and that the Department will begin soliciting applications.

August 17, 2026, is the date on the Department's program home page, which lists a staged portal: September 25, 2026, for invited candidates; November 4, 2026, for the first 5,000 public applicants; January 4, 2027, for 500 more applicants and the start of fee collection. September 9, 2026, is the "updated" date on the Department's questions page, which explains the staging in similar words and adds portal details such as the 30-day completion window. The home page and the rule's effective-date sentence are both official and they are not identical. This timeline reports both. It does not merge them into one story.

How to use the list

If a claim about restoration does not land on one of these dates, ask which document supports it before repeating it. The myths article is the short version of the claims that fail that test. The preparation article is the document list for a person who is getting papers together under the 2026 rule. Rights Restore can help organize that work. It does not add dates, and it does not grant relief. The place to ask for a beta spot is the beta page.