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Our Facebook fans wanted to know whether people convicted of felonies are eligable to get their gun rights back.

In Iowa, it depends on the felony.

If the person was convicted of a crime not greater than a Class C felony, they are eligable to apply to get their rights back.

"The process begins [at the Sheriff's department], they fill the paperwork out and send it to the appropriate state department," Ottumwa Sheriff Don Kirkendall said. "At some point, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation will assign a case agent to do a background on the individual."

The felony itself, the individual's background and crime history since the conviction and the opinion of the Sheriff's Department can all infuence whether an individual will be given back their gun rights. The actual process takes a while.

"It can take quite some time, depending on the caseload the DCI is carrying, and it does take a considerable amount of time on the agent's part to do a thorough background," Kirkendall said. "It can easily take a year, or even longer in some instances, for a person to know one way or the other."

However, people convicted of forcable felonies like rape, assault with a weapon, sexual abuse and some financial crimes, cannot get back those rights.

There are also federal restrictions on specific crimes that may also prohibit the rights from being obtained. Kirkendall says those instances are dealt with on a case-by-case basis.