The ATF funding rider is the legislative device John Kiriakou identifies as the practical reason that a formally available restoration of firearm rights has never restored anyone’s. He set it out in January 2026 while answering a question about what a presidential pardon would actually get him.
The pardon question
Asked what he would receive if he succeeded in obtaining a pardon, Kiriakou’s answer was one word: “My pension.” Told that this was not a small thing, he agreed that it was the whole thing, twenty years of proud government service, and something he needs to live on in old age.[1]
He can already vote. Governor Terry McAuliffe, who had followed his case, pardoned him at the state level without his ever having applied, because elections are administered by the states.[1][2]
The split between state and federal rights
The consequence he finds absurd is that he has his state gun rights back and not his federal ones.[2] Asked whether that means he can carry in Virginia, his answer was yes and no: he can carry legally in Virginia in the sense that he is not violating a state law, but he is still violating federal law.[2] Rall’s analogy, the position of a state-licensed cannabis dealer, drew his agreement: “exactly the same thing.”[2]
The rider itself
The mechanism is the part Kiriakou says he and the constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein have discussed ad nauseam. Congress passed a law in the 1990s, under Bill Clinton, providing that felons may apply to the ATF to have their gun rights reinstated if they were not convicted of a violent or drug-related felony.[3]
In the same law, Congress provided that no federal money shall be expended by the ATF to investigate any of the people who apply.[3] The result, as Rall put it and Kiriakou did not dispute, is that no one has ever had their gun rights restored.[4]
Kiriakou’s own response to the same problem in its modern form, a 2025 Justice Department restoration process announced and never built, has been litigation rather than another application.