I used to be no guns for ex-cons, never.
But I thought about it.
If an ex-con is going to backslide, all the laws in the world won’t keep him from getting a gun. This is a basis for our overall opposition to gun-control: Criminals don’t obey gun-control laws. Also, the Feds are working very hard at making felons of us all!
And if an ex-con is going straight, he may need the means of self defense even more than we do.
I am less sanguine about returning the their vote franchise.
Prison releasees that don’t have gun rights can secure a gun to commit a crime, but it sure interferes with them readopting the life of owning guns and keeping them around, displaying them and using them as part of their “muscle”.
I have known a lot of ex-cons that do not want to be caught with a gun in their house or car, or on their person, and considering how physical and threatening felons and ex-con types generally like to be, both before and after doing time, it makes for weakened status for them when they return to their blue collar type world, it has a sobering effect on them in their social interactions.