It's not uncommon for those who have been "previously convicted of a Felony" to continue to be mislabeled as a "convicted felon" for life. Whereas a "convicted felon is someone who is currently under sentence for a felony conviction". Once you complete the terms and conditions of any imposed sentence, you become a citizen again.
At no point in time, nor under any written law, have I ever been sentenced to a term of life for any previous felony conviction.
Another misunderstanding about legal terms is "Felon in possession" and "fleeing felon". Neither of which requires a previous conviction. All you need to do is be "in the commission of a felony" to be a felon. That is the legal truth of the term.
Anyone commenting a felony is a felon. Anyone serving a sentence for a felony is a convicted felon.
Your beginning to see the reality of this in the overturned cases of felony firearms charges in the supreme court.
2nd amendment is untouchable and lately the courts have pushed back on these untouched loose uses of legal language.
Remember that Wyatt Earp was released and handed his guns back, after his murder conviction l.
I don't disagree with any of that. Nor do I disagree that a permanent suspension of rights for any citizen is something our Constitution allows, or government should be allowed to do in perpetuity from a purely legal perspective. The idea of "paying your debt to society" and returning a citizen is a valid one. That said, this moral and legal theory has smashed against reality.
The laws have evolved the way they have because both jail and prison are not a deterrent to the 50% of our prison population that is caught reoffending and returns to prison. It's just a fact that a small percentage of the population is committing all the crimes, and we've seen what happens when a progressive prosecutor seeks to avoid sending the guilty into incarceration and allows these criminals to run loose. Crime skyrockets.
Immediate, public execution, public humiliation, public corporal punishments, and the like went away in the early 1800s. I think there is evidence in Asian countries where these practices persist that they do have an impact on crime, but at this point they've been gone so long they would be universally rejected as cruel and unusual. Progressives want to lower incarceration, but there isn't an alternative, so they just promote crime, because there's a consensus that locking people up is not cruel or unusual and is the most humane (although most costly) alternative. They have no argument, so they fall back on the fallacy of disparate impact as if criminal cases were adjudicated other than on a case by case basis. Really poor logic resting on a false premise.
Criminals are narcissistic personalities who don't empathize or think about their victims and they don't believe they're going to get caught, period. Since half of them will continue committing serious crimes after being punished with incarceration it is easy to see why so many states deny them the right to weapons. They get them anyway, and it is one of the most pled down charges in the criminal justice system.
I disagree with it on a theoretical level, but practically it makes too much sense to ignore it. It's very complicated and the sets of data to consider are quite large. It's not something that should be considered based on case studies, as it effects everyone living in the country. Our justice system is an always will be imperfect. There will always be tension between the ideal and the reality.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams
As our society has become more secular, less moral, and less cohesive the idea of universal liberty becomes more and more of an ideal and less and less of a practical reality. If you are one of those libertarians who argues for absolute liberty absent the prerequisite culture and moral norms that make it possible I put you in the same ideological category as communists who dismiss the very same things in favor of treating everyone like an insect. Just as socialism only woks when everyone is the same in-fact, so too does liberty only work upon the foundations of civil society. The stronger that civil society the more liberty is possible. The weaker the more authoritarianism is required to maintain order. It's a balance and a dance because we are fallen creatures living in a fallen world, and if you don't believe that you are part of the problem.