On July 18, U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi argued that felons should regain access to guns because the right to bear arms is, as she claims, “every bit as constitutionally enshrined as the right to vote.” But perhaps Ms. Bondi needs a reminder of just how dubious the right to vote is in America.

The truth is, there was no right to vote enumerated in the unamended Constitution, nor in the Bill of Rights (which comprises the first ten amendments to the Constitution). Even today, the right to vote is not based solely on an article of or amendment to the Constitution, but through a patchwork of amendments and Supreme Court decisions, such as Yick Wo v. Hopkins, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board and Reynolds v. Sims. Other democratic countries, such as France, explicitly and strongly protect the right to vote.

To use the U.S. right to vote as a beacon for a well-protected right is laughable at best. Supporting this, the supposed “constitutionally enshrined right to vote” has not been upheld in modern-day America. At this very moment, millions of American citizens who happen to reside in American territories, such as Puerto Rico and Guam, lack the right to vote in presidential elections even though they are full U.S. citizens, demonstrating that such a “right” is far from universally upheld.

Ms. Bondi may also need to be refreshed on her own history of felon disenfranchisement. She does, after all, support this new policy to allow felons to regain access to firearms based partially on the notion that the right to vote is “constitutionally enshrined” and presumably unable to be abridged. However, in 2011, then-Florida Attorney General Bondi herself instituted an application requirement for Florida felons to regain their right to vote (which they lost due to their crimes), shifting from the prior policy of automatically reinstating their right to vote after finishing their sentences, illustrating Bondi’s bias towards abridging what she now refers to as a “constitutionally enshrined” right.

Indeed, in an op-ed Bondi wrote for the Tampa Bay Times in 2011, she argued that “[Automatic voting-right restoration] ignores the Constitution’s imposition of the loss of civil rights as a consequence separate from any criminal sentence.” Apparently, according to Bondi herself, some civil rights can be taken away due to a crime, even ones which are “constitutionally enshrined.” She also held that, “The ‘paid their debt’ argument … wrongly suggests that completion of a criminal sentence signals rehabilitation.” Notwithstanding the lack of nuance in her perspective, perhaps Ms. Bondi should remember, as she now argues for felons and perpetrators of domestic violence to regain access to guns, her own words from her time as Florida AG -- that completion of sentence does not equal rehabilitation.

If Ms. Bondi really believes in upholding constitutional rights for American citizens, she should start with the millions of Americans still denied their right to vote, instead of putting guns in the hands of the criminals of America -- those she herself believes may not be rehabilitated. Nevertheless, perhaps the right to vote won’t matter much in the near future. After all, Ms. Bondi’s boss did once say as a presidential candidate to a group of voters that, if he was elected, “You won’t have to vote anymore.”

Jack Pandey is a home-schooled high-school policy debater from Dublin, Ohio, who has competed in dozens of debates regarding voting rights in America.

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