Court Opinion

ID: 9482292
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:45:44.621602+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:53.178832
License: Public Domain

FLETCHER, Circuit Judge:
Dissent from majority order denying petition for rehearing and amendment to dissent:
I dissent from the majority’s order. It simply perpetuates and compounds the majority’s errors in its opinion filed May 13, 1991.
I amend my dissent to the majority opinion filed May 13,1991 by adding the following as an additional paragraph at the end of the dissent:
We should also defer to an administering agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute. Chevron USA v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 843, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 2782, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984). The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has identified as “legislative intent” that Federal firearms disabilities should continue “unless the person’s rights to receive and possess firearms have been restored by the jurisdiction where the conviction occurred.” 53 Fed.Reg. 10,-480 (1988) (emphasis added). The agency’s interpretation is not the tautology the majority makes it out to be. The federal jurisdiction, where this conviction occurred, has a specific mechanism for restoring the right to receive and possess firearms: 18 U.S.C. § 925(c). Where the convicting jurisdiction has declined to restore the civil right or rights stripped from a defendant through that jurisdiction’s own restoration procedure, Congress intended that the conviction remain a predicate offense.