Sonja Starr, a University of Michigan Law School professor who studies the collateral consequences of criminal convictions, said the public has little to fear when gun rights are restored. In most places, she said, the process is arduous, and the small fraction of people who bother to fill out paperwork, hire a lawyer, or appear before a judge are unlikely to commit another crime. In her state, she studied people eligible to have their rights restored and found that only about 6.5 percent went through the required legal process within five years of becoming eligible. Her research showed that those people were less likely to commit a crime than the general population.