I also believe that most laws disarming felons after release from prison have been passed recently. It may be that our Republic did quite well without such laws for a century and a half.
This makes laws which disarm free people, even after having been convicted and sentenced to prison, both cruel and unusual. There is a specific Constitutional ban on such laws.
Good for South Dakota for taking this first step. The solution is not to distrust free people by disarming them. But to imprison those who cannot be trusted such that repeated violations of trust cannot occur.
They are, but in this case we are talking about deprivation of rights for conviction of a misdemeanor, or even for merely having a restraining order against a person in a divorce case. (That person could very well be the woman, who actually needs the firearm to protect her against a soon to be ex husband) That law is even more recent. It was contained in the Lautenberg Amendment to the Defense Appropriations Act of 1996 (How's that for packaging in a non related provision on a "must pass" bill?)