We need to set a few things straight here. I've done it before, but it bears repetition.
If you commit a crime - a real one and not some nonsense like smoking a joint, buying hooker services, and the like - and you are righteously tried and convicted, you are them a convicted felon. You go serve out your sentence and once the criminal debt is discharged, you are no longer a convicted felon - you are no longer a criminal. You are an ex-criminal. From that point all all is supposed to be even and all rights should be restored.
If perchance you choose to involve yourself in yet another criminal endeavor and are again apprehended, tried, and convicted, you once again earn the status of convicted felon. When you are released, once again all rights should be restored. If they are not, this implies any of a number of things, none good. Either you have NOT discharged the criminal debt you incurred by committing the crime in question, in which case you should still be under sentence and should almost certainly be in prison or jail, or those in power are of the mind that rights are not rights at all, but rather privileges to be taken from ostensibly free men according to some arbitrary scheme.
To retain the status of "felon" after having been released from prison makes no sense. If you are still a menace, why have you been released? What was the judge thinking when he passed sentence? If you have been released, the only morally justifiable position to take is the assumption that, having paid your debt you are now once again a free man and NO free man may be disbarred from the exercise of ANY of his rights. Period.
The moment Joe Murder steps foot our of prison, his friends should be able to put a gun in his hand and he should be free to walk the streets unmolested. Some say this is insanity, but I assert it is the only right way to proceed. Such men meet bad ends in most cases. Even if we assume the worst in others we are unable to offer a credible moral justification for denying them the exercise of their natural rights because no such justification exists.
The one area where I am still uncertain and would here solicit discussion, is the issue of one's criminal history. Should a man who is on trial for his nth criminal offense have the history of his n-1 offenses taken into consideration when being sentenced? A small part of me says, "maybe" but the larger part says no. Does anyone have an informed opinion on this?