Trump Administration Prepares to Give Gun Rights Back to Some Convicts

The Justice Department plans to create a path for people with criminal convictions to own guns again, an issue that became contentious at the agency when officials there sought to restore that right to the actor Mel Gibson, a prominent supporter of President Trump’s.

The move would hand a victory to gun rights supporters less than a year after the Supreme Court ruled that the government could restrict firearms access to people facing restraining orders for domestic violence. Shortly after Attorney General Pam Bondi was confirmed in February, Mr. Trump ordered a review of the federal government’s gun policies.

The department still supports laws ensuring “violent and dangerous people” cannot lawfully acquire firearms, as long as there is “an appropriate avenue” to restore rights to people who have earned the chance to own guns again, according to an interim rule set to be published on Thursday in The Federal Register.

Determining whose gun rights should be restored depends on a number of factors, the notice says, including “a combination of the nature of their past criminal activity and their subsequent and current law-abiding behavior.”

Under a decades-old law, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives can return gun rights to specific people. But starting in 1992, congressional spending bills barred the A.T.F. from doing so.

The interim rule would effectively give that authority to the attorney general, who would then delegate it to another Justice Department official or office.

As the Trump administration prepared to reverse some limits on gun ownership, Justice Department officials debated who should be eligible. They quickly ruled out murderers and armed robbers. But they considered whether domestic abusers should get their rights back, and how many years should elapse before gun rights are restored.

Elizabeth G. Oyer, the department’s former pardon attorney, said that she was deeply opposed to one proposal, which would make the restoration of gun rights automated, so that a computer program, not employees at the department, would review individual cases.