Gun Grabbers Are Making Sure the Past Haunts You - #2A
How Old Misdemeanors & Broken Records Are Quietly Killing Gun Rights
Imagine getting banned for life from owning a gun—because of a bar fight 40 years ago that you don’t even remember the details. That’s not a dystopian what-if. It’s a real outcome, thanks to how our background check system interprets old, vague misdemeanor charges—and it’s happening more often than most people realize.
Attorney and NRA Board Member, Jonathan Goldstein, warns of this exact threat in his excellent article, “Misdemeanor Crimes of Domestic Violence: A Vector for Wrongful Extinguishment of Firearms Rights.” He tells the story of “John,” a man who pleaded guilty to a minor assault charge after a confusing bar brawl in the 1980s. No one served jail time. No one even expected the incident to follow them past the weekend.
“The records of the incident are then put in a box like so many other arrest records and misdemeanor disposition records and are dutifully stored away in the wet, moldy basement of a small Pennsylvania courthouse,” Goldstein writes.
That forgotten paperwork sat untouched for decades—until one day, the courthouse decided to upload everything into Pennsylvania’s background check system, known as PICS. And that’s when the nightmare started…