as implied in a cousin comment, I don't think this applies if they're currently incarcerated. at least at the federal level, the BOP should have records of who

as implied in a cousin comment, I don't think this applies if they're currently incarcerated. at least at the federal level, the BOP should have records of who was sentenced with firearms or other violent sentencing modifiers in order to properly segregate them from non-violent offenders. that wouldn't work for the idea of purging their records, but for the OP argument, it ought to work reasonably well. for the rare cases where it doesn't, some burden could be put on the inmate to collect and submit their documents for approval, the same as if they were filing an appeal.