A disability is the law’s word for the status that stops a person shipping, transporting, possessing, or receiving firearms. This section is about the events that REMOVE one. It is worth separating that from the exemptions the part also contains — provisions the part simply does not apply to — because the two look similar from a distance and work entirely differently. An exemption means the rule never reached the situation; relief means the rule reached a person and has now stopped applying to them.

A pardon granted by the President of the United States for a federal conviction of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding 1 year removes any disability this part would otherwise impose with respect to THAT conviction. State and foreign relief is treated broadly and then narrowed: a pardon by a Governor, another state pardoning authority, or the pardoning authority of a foreign jurisdiction — and equally an expunction, a reversal, a setting aside, any other proceeding rendering a conviction nugatory, or a restoration of civil rights — removes the disability with respect to that conviction. So the route matters less than the effect; several quite different legal events reach the same place.

Two conditions take it away again, and both turn on the words of the instrument rather than on the fact of it. The relief does NOT remove the disability if the pardon, expunction, setting aside, other proceeding, or restoration of civil rights EXPRESSLY PROVIDES that the person may not ship, transport, possess, or receive firearms. Nor does it if the relief did not FULLY RESTORE the person’s rights to possess or receive firearms under the law of the jurisdiction where the conviction occurred. A document that looks like complete relief on its face may be neither, and both tests require reading it and the law of that jurisdiction rather than assuming.

Indictment is handled separately, and generously. A licensed importer, manufacturer, dealer, or collector who is indicted for a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding 1 year may — notwithstanding any other provision of the Act — CONTINUE OPERATIONS under the existing license during the term of the indictment and until any conviction under it becomes final. There is one condition, and it is procedural: if the license term expires in the period between indictment and a final conviction, the licensee must file a TIMELY application for renewal to keep operating, and that application must show that the applicant is under indictment for such a crime.