Prosecutors said Altsman had two felony burglary convictions
Felons are not allowed to own firearms. I don't care if they use them for hammers and crowbars; Felons have demonstrated the ability to break the law. Part of the punishment is that they may never own a weapon again. This Felon chose to ignore the law again (3rd time, darn this a stupid one), and with that comes a consequence.
Winner of the "duh" comment of the day award.
In case you hadn't noticed, every human has the ability to break the law. If you're advocating punishing those who show that ability, you might as well strap every infant down from birth and rescind the entire Bill of Rights. That is not the benchmark to use in determining who should and should not be punished, mainly because it does not do anything to differentiate. In point of fact, it merely classifies every human as criminal, and frees the state to mete put punishment at will. What's your definition of a police state? Your standard surely makes a rather powerful one, as police states go.