Nine Americans Just Got Their Gun Rights Back. The Application Line Doesn’t Even Open Until September 21.
The first individual gun-rights restorations since 1992 are in the Federal Register: nine names, two grant dates, and a process that takes its first public applications September 21.
Gun rights restored by the federal government, in print, for the first time since 1992: the Justice Department published nine names in the Federal Register on August 27, each one a person the Attorney General has cleared of the lifetime federal firearm prohibition. The notice sits at 91 FR 55362, runs barely two pages, and carries the heading “Granting of Relief; Federal Firearms Privileges.”
The last time an individual got that piece of paper, the program that issues it was months from going dark for three and a half decades.
Quick refresher: 18 U.S.C. 925(c) has let a prohibited person petition the Attorney General to lift the federal firearms ban since 1968. Congress cut off the money to process individual petitions in 1992, and every spending bill since kept the lights off.
Corporations still slipped through now and then (Northrop Grumman collected relief in 2014). Actual human beings did not, until now.
The scoreboard: eight of the nine grants were signed May 18 by then Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, and the ninth followed August 5. Publication is the legal formality that makes them official record: the statute directs the Department to “promptly publish in the Federal Register notice of such action, together with the reasons therefor.”
The notice delivers nine names, two dates, and a signature. The reasons therefor are, it seems, on a need-to-know basis.
Who this reaches: the Department’s own final rule counts more than 31 million active federal-prohibitor records in the NICS Indices as of May 31, 2026, most of them the felony ban in 922(g)(1). The same rule estimates around 330,000 relief applications in year one.
Which brings us to the wrinkle: none of the first nine used the new application process. They couldn’t have. It doesn’t open until September 21.
Their grants came out of files already sitting with the pardon office, materials each person had submitted “seeking either a pardon or relief from Federal firearms disabilities.” The federal government showed up early to its own grand opening.
The face of the batch: Patrick Atkinson pleaded guilty in 1998 to one count of federal mail fraud tied to a job-placement scheme. The sentence was two years of probation, six months of home confinement, restitution, and community service: no prison, and supervision done by 2000.
The lifetime gun ban outlived all of it by a quarter century, so he sued. In 2023 the Seventh Circuit revived his challenge to 922(g)(1) and sent it back for the full Bruen historical analysis.
He spent years asking the courts for his rights back. The answer walked in through a different door.
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The fine print: a 925(c) grant removes the federal prohibition and does nothing else. The conviction stays on the books, the grant is not a pardon, and any state-law prohibition keeps operating at full strength.
What to watch: the intake window opens September 21 under the rule at 91 FR 54054, with the Office of the Pardon Attorney running the desk, a $30 fee, presumptive denials for violent felonies, and five- or ten-year waits depending on the offense. The application form at justice.gov/ffrr is still listed as “available soon.”
We walked the rule’s gate-by-gate criteria in our August breakdown if you’re mapping your own route to getting gun rights restored.
More names should follow, and every batch legally has to land in the Federal Register, so the public scoreboard updates itself. Just remember, when the line forms on September 21: nine seats were already warm.
If a decades-old conviction were yours, would you file in the first wave or wait for the process to prove itself? Let us know in the comments.
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Sources: Granting of Relief; Federal Firearms Privileges, 91 FR 55362 (Aug. 27, 2026); DOJ final rule, 91 FR 54054 (Aug. 20, 2026); Atkinson v. Garland, No. 22-1557 (7th Cir. 2023); DOJ Office of the Pardon Attorney, Federal Firearm Rights Restoration. DOJ building photo: G. Edward Johnson, CC BY 4.0.
Justin Trump is the managing editor and owner of CAT Outdoors. The son of a Vietnam veteran, he’s a Certified Glock Armorer, an avid gun enthusiast and 2A advocate. He holds two firearm patents for the CAT M4 and Talon tools. When not managing CAT Outdoors, he enjoys spending time with his family and friends, rooting for Michigan sports teams, and serving his church.