Rand Paul Wants to Restore Felons’ Voting Rights. What About Their Gun Rights?

This
week Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)
plans to introduce a bill that would restore the federal voting
rights of nonviolent felons who have completed their prison terms
or served at least a year of probation. Citing figures from the
Sentencing Project, Politico notes
that “nearly 8 percent of the black population currently
cannot vote, compared with 1.8 percent of the nonblack
population.” As Paul
points out, blacks are also disproportionately affected by the
mandatory minimum sentences he wants to
abolish. Politico cites evidence that Paul’s support
for such reforms is helping him among African-American voters:
“A recent poll in
Kentucky showed Paul garnering 29 percent of the African-American
vote—a huge bump from the 13 percent he received during his 2010
Senate campaign.” Asked about the political
calculus underlying his criminal-justice proposals, Paul
says: “I believe in these issues. But I’m
a politician, and we want more votes. Even if Republicans don’t get
more votes, we feel like we’ve done the right thing.”

I agree that it’s the right thing, although I would
support the broader approach favored by the ACLU, which would
restore voting rights to all felons who have served their time,
regardless of the crimes they committed. It has
never made sense to me that committing a felony should forever turn
someone into a second-class citizen, which contradicts the goal of
reintegrating people into society after they’ve completed their
sentences. In the same vein, why should everyone convicted of a
felony be
permanently stripped of his Second Amendment rights? Paul likes
to tell the story of a friend’s brother who to this day is not
allowed to vote because of a 20-year-old marijuana conviction. It
makes no more sense that to this day he is not allowed to own a
gun, and I imagine that many Americans attach more value to the
fundamental human right of armed self-defense than they do to the
privilege of checking off the least odious choice on a list of
politicians every couple of years. Amending the
Gun Control Act of 1968 to eliminate such arbitrary
deprivations of liberty seems like another issue that could give
rise to interesting and productive left-right alliances.