Can a Felon Own a Gun?

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

When does federal law bar gun possession after a conviction?

18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) makes it a federal crime for anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year in prison to ship, transport, possess, or receive any firearm or ammunition, anywhere in the United States. Four narrow exceptions exist, and one of them — an application to the Attorney General under 18 U.S.C. § 925(c) — became available again in 2026.

Key takeaways on felons and firearm possession

• The trigger is the maximum sentence available, not the sentence you received. Probation-only still counts.
• Ammunition counts. A single loose cartridge is a completed offense.
• Possession is broader than ownership. Henderson v. United States, 575 U.S. 622 (2015): § 922(g) “does not prohibit a felon from owning firearms,” but it reaches possession “in every form,” actual and constructive.
• A knowing violation carries up to 15 years; with three qualifying priors, a 15-year mandatory minimum under the Armed Career Criminal Act.
• State permission does not cure a federal conviction. Beecham v. United States, 511 U.S. 368 (1994).
• Antique firearms are not “firearms” under the federal definition — a real but narrow exception, and one that state law frequently closes.
• Whether § 922(g)(1) can be challenged as applied to a nonviolent offender depends on which circuit you are in.

What exactly does federal law prohibit?

Section 922(g)(1) makes it unlawful for a person “who has been convicted in any court of[] a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” to “ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition,” or “to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce.”

Unpacked into its working parts, with the exceptions attached:

The rule	What it means in practice	The exception, and where it comes from
“Convicted”	A conviction in any domestic court — federal, state, or tribal; foreign convictions do not count	A conviction that has been expunged, set aside, pardoned, or for which civil rights were restored is not a conviction — unless the relief expressly bars firearms. § 921(a)(20)
“Punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year”	The statutory maximum available, not the sentence imposed. A one-day sentence on a five-year offense triggers it	Excludes federal or state offenses “pertaining to antitrust violations, unfair trade practices, restraints of trade, or other similar offenses relating to the regulation of business practices,” and excludes state misdemeanors punishable by two years or less. § 921(a)(20)(A)–(B)
“Firearm”	Any weapon that will, is designed to, or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive; the frame or receiver; a muffler or silencer; and any destructive device. § 921(a)(3)	“Such term does not include an antique firearm.” § 921(a)(3); definition at § 921(a)(16)
“Ammunition”	“[A]mmunition or cartridge cases, primers, bullets, or propellent powder designed for use in any firearm.” § 921(a)(17)(A)	None. There is no de minimis exception
“Possess”	Actual or constructive — “the power and intent to exercise control over the object.” Henderson, 575 U.S. at 626	Ownership without possession is not prohibited. Henderson
“In or affecting commerce”	The jurisdictional element; satisfied in nearly every case because almost every firearm has crossed a state line at some point	Knowledge of this element is not required. Rehaif
Mental state	The government must prove the defendant knew he possessed the firearm and knew he belonged to the prohibited category. Rehaif v. United States, 588 U.S. 225 (2019)	Not a defense that you believed the law allowed possession — Rehaif concerns knowledge of status, not of the statute
Penalty	Up to 15 years. § 924(a)(8)	With three prior violent felonies or serious drug offenses on different occasions: 15-year mandatory minimum, no probation, no suspended sentence. § 924(e)

“Punishable by” is the phrase that catches people

Two people with identical conduct can end up on opposite sides of this line because of how their state classified the offense, not because of what they did or what they served. A state offense with a two-year maximum is outside § 922(g)(1) if it is a misdemeanor and inside if it is a felony — and a state felony with a five-year maximum triggers the bar even if the defendant got a fine and unsupervised probation.

This is also why “are you still a felon after seven years?” has no yes-or-no answer. Nothing in § 922(g)(1) expires. There is no federal waiting period after which the disability lapses on its own. It ends when the conviction is relieved under § 921(a)(20), when a pardon issues, or when the Attorney General grants relief under § 925(c) — and not otherwise.

What counts as possession — and why people are charged for guns they never touched

This is the single largest source of unnecessary federal prosecutions in this area, and the Supreme Court has explained it cleanly.

In Henderson v. United States, 575 U.S. 622 (2015), the Court held that § 922(g) “proscribes possession alone, but covers possession in every form. By its terms, § 922(g) does not prohibit a felon from owning firearms. Rather, it interferes with a single incident of ownership — one of the proverbial sticks in the bundle of property rights — by preventing the felon from knowingly possessing his (or another person’s) guns. But that stick is a thick one, encompassing what the criminal law recognizes as ‘actual’ and ‘constructive’ possession alike.”

The Court then defined both: “Actual possession exists when a person has direct physical control over a thing. . . . Constructive possession is established when a person, though lacking such physical custody, still has the power and intent to exercise control over the object.”

Lower courts apply that in ways that matter enormously to households:

• Where the prohibited person has exclusive control of the premises where the gun is found, a jury may ordinarily infer knowledge and control from that alone. United States v. Benford, 875 F.3d 1007, 1014 (10th Cir. 2017).
• Where the premises are jointly occupied, the government must show a “nexus” — “that the defendant had knowledge of and access to the firearm.” Id.

Benford also confirms that constructive possession “requires both the power to control an object and intent to exercise that control,” a formulation the Tenth Circuit adopted after Henderson.

The practical translation, which should be said plainly: a spouse’s lawfully owned shotgun in an unlocked closet of a shared home is a risk. Not automatically a crime — the government still has to prove knowledge, access, power, and intent — but the kind of risk that turns on where the gun is stored, who has the key, and what the prohibited person knew. Households in this situation should be getting specific advice, not reassurance.

What happens to guns you already owned?

Henderson answers this, and it is the most useful thing on this page for someone who owned firearms before the conviction.

The Court held that “[a] court-ordered transfer of a felon’s lawfully owned firearms from Government custody to a third party is not barred by § 922(g) if the court is satisfied that the recipient will not give the felon control over the firearms, so that he could either use them or direct their use.” A court may approve a transfer to a buyer, or to “a person who expects to maintain custody of them, so long as the recipient will not allow the felon to exert any influence over their use.”

The Court also described what a judge may reasonably require: the court “may ask the proposed transferee to promise to keep the guns away from the felon, and to acknowledge that allowing him to use them would aid and abet a § 922(g) violation.” And it added the limit — “[e]ven such a pledge, of course, might fail to provide an adequate safeguard, and a court should then disapprove the transfer.”

A transfer to a spouse who lives in the same house, keeps the guns in the same closet, and would hand one over on request is exactly the arrangement Henderson says a court should refuse.

Is there any type of gun a felon can own?

Yes — one narrow category, and it comes from the definition rather than from any exception for people.

Section 921(a)(3) provides that the term “firearm” “does not include an antique firearm.” Section 921(a)(16) defines that term in three parts:

1. Any firearm — including matchlock, flintlock, percussion cap, or similar ignition system — manufactured in or before 1898;
2. Any replica of such a firearm, if the replica either is not designed or redesigned to use rimfire or conventional centerfire fixed ammunition, or uses such ammunition that “is no longer manufactured in the United States and . . . is not readily available in the ordinary channels of commercial trade”; or
3. Any muzzle loading rifle, shotgun, or pistol “designed to use black powder, or a black powder substitute, and which cannot use fixed ammunition.”

The third category carries an express carve-out from the carve-out, and it is where people go wrong: the term “shall not include any weapon which incorporates a firearm frame or receiver, any firearm which is converted into a muzzle loading weapon, or any muzzle loading weapon which can be readily converted to fire fixed ammunition by replacing the barrel, bolt, breechblock, or any combination thereof.”

So a modern in-line muzzleloader built on a centerfire rifle action, or one with a drop-in conversion barrel available, is not an antique firearm. It is a firearm, and possessing it is a federal felony.

Three further cautions before anyone acts on this:

• State law is separate and frequently stricter. Many states prohibit a person with a felony conviction from possessing black-powder or antique firearms even though federal law does not. Federal permission is not state permission.
• Ammunition for a modern firearm is still prohibited regardless of what you own. Section 922(g) bars possessing “any firearm or ammunition.”
• Crossbows, bows, and air rifles are not firearms under § 921(a)(3) because they do not expel a projectile “by the action of an explosive” — but again, state law may say otherwise, and a firearm-adjacent item is a poor place to test a theory.

Does a state expungement, set-aside, or pardon fix it?

Sometimes — and only for a state conviction, and only if it is complete.

Section 921(a)(20) contains the exemption: “Any conviction which has been expunged, or set aside or for which a person has been pardoned or has had civil rights restored shall not be considered a conviction for purposes of this chapter, unless such pardon, expungement, or restoration of civil rights expressly provides that the person may not ship, transport, possess, or receive firearms.”

Three Supreme Court decisions set its boundaries.

The relief has to come from the jurisdiction that convicted you. Beecham v. United States, 511 U.S. 368 (1994). Section 921(a)(20) says “[w]hat constitutes a conviction of such a crime shall be determined in accordance with the law of the jurisdiction in which the proceedings were held,” and the Court held that clause governs the exemption too: “[a]sking whether a person has had civil rights restored is thus just one step in determining whether something should ‘be considered a conviction,'” and that question “is governed by the law of the convicting jurisdiction.” The petitioners — federal convictions, state restorations — lost. They “can take advantage of § 921(a)(20) only if they have had their civil rights restored under federal law.”

A partial restriction is a total failure. Caron v. United States, 524 U.S. 308 (1998). Massachusetts restored the petitioner’s civil rights but still barred him from carrying handguns outside his home while permitting long guns. The Court held the conviction still counted for all federal purposes: “Either the restorations forbade possession of ‘firearms’ and the convictions count for all purposes, or they did not and the convictions count not at all.” A state certificate that says “except firearms” — or that leaves any firearms restriction in state law — buys nothing.

Caron helps in one respect: restoration “by operation of law rather than by pardon” is sufficient, because “[n]othing in the text of § 921(a)(20) requires a case-by-case decision to restore civil rights to this particular offender.”

You cannot restore what was never lost. Logan v. United States, 552 U.S. 23 (2007). Where a conviction never cost the person their civil rights, the exemption “does not cover the case of an offender who retained civil rights at all times, and whose legal status, postconviction, remained in all respects unaltered by any state dispensation.” Logan also identifies the rights that count: “the rights to vote, hold office, and serve on a jury.”

One superseded authority to watch for. Dickerson v. New Banner Institute, Inc., 460 U.S. 103 (1983), held that whether a person was “convicted” is “a question of federal, not state, law” and that a state expunction did not lift the federal bar. Congress responded in 1986 by adding § 921(a)(20)’s choice-of-law clause — a response Beecham itself notes, observing that legislators “may have been simply responding to our decision in Dickerson v. New Banner Institute, Inc., 460 U.S. 103 (1983).” Pages still citing Dickerson for the flat proposition that state relief is irrelevant are citing law Congress changed.

For what states actually do and how the four state approaches differ, see how to get gun rights back after felony.

What are the routes out of the federal bar?

Four, described in orientation depth here and in full at gun rights restoration.

Route	Reaches	Decided by	Status
Presidential pardon	Federal convictions only	The President	Available; the President cannot pardon a state conviction
§ 925(c) relief	Any federal § 922(g) disability	The Attorney General, via the Office of the Pardon Attorney	Reopened in 2026. Public applications open Nov. 4, 2026, capped at 5,000
§ 921(a)(20) expungement / set-aside / restoration	The convicting jurisdiction’s conviction — practically, state	The convicting jurisdiction	Available where state law provides it
State restoration	State convictions in that state	Governor, court, board, or automatic	Varies by state; irrelevant to a federal conviction

The change worth knowing about is the second row. For more than thirty years an appropriations rider barred ATF from spending any money to “investigate or act upon applications for relief from Federal firearms disabilities under 18 U.S.C. [§] 925(c)” — the language the Supreme Court quoted in United States v. Bean, 537 U.S. 71 (2002) — and Bean held that the resulting inaction was not a “denial” a court could review. In March 2025 the Department withdrew ATF’s delegation, and on August 20, 2026 it published a final rule at 91 Fed. Reg. 54054, effective September 21, 2026, standing the process back up under the Office of the Pardon Attorney.

The application, its documentary requirements, and its presumptive disqualifiers are at federal firearm rights restoration.

Is the felon-in-possession ban unconstitutional?

Not as a general matter — and whether it is unconstitutional as applied to a particular person currently depends on where that person lives.

The framework comes from New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022): “when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct, and to justify a firearm regulation the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024), applied that to § 922(g)(8) and upheld it: “When an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.” Rahimi loosened the analogical test — a modern law “need not be a ‘dead ringer’ or a ‘historical twin'” — and repeated that Heller described prohibitions on possession by “felons and the mentally ill” as “presumptively lawful.” It also declined the government’s broader theory, rejecting the argument that Rahimi could be disarmed “simply because he is not ‘responsible'”: that term “is a vague term,” and Heller and Bruen “did not define the term and said nothing about the status of citizens who were not ‘responsible.'”

Rahimi left § 922(g)(1) as applied to nonviolent offenders open, and two en banc courts have now answered it in opposite directions.

Court	Case	Holding
Third Circuit (en banc)	Range v. Attorney General, 124 F.4th 218 (3d Cir. 2024)	§ 922(g)(1) unconstitutional as applied to a man whose disqualifying offense was a 1995 guilty plea for a false statement to obtain food stamps
Ninth Circuit (en banc)	United States v. Duarte, 137 F.4th 743 (9th Cir. 2025)	§ 922(g)(1) is not unconstitutional as applied to nonviolent felons

Range is emphatic about its own limits: “Our decision today is a narrow one.” The court held Range “remains among ‘the people'” protected by the Second Amendment, noted that “[t]he record contains no evidence that Range poses a physical danger to others,” and concluded that “[b]ecause the Government has not shown that our Republic has a longstanding history and tradition of depriving people like Range of their firearms, § 922(g)(1) cannot constitutionally strip him of his Second Amendment rights.” Part of its reasoning was chronological: a law “passed in 1961 — some 170 years after the Second Amendment’s ratification . . . falls well short of ‘longstanding.'”

Duarte went the other way and said so directly: “Today, we align ourselves with the Fourth, Eighth, Tenth and Eleventh Circuits and hold that § 922(g)(1) is not unconstitutional as applied to non-violent felons like Steven Duarte.” It agreed that felons are among “the people” but held the government carried its historical burden, reasoning that “if the greater punishment of death and estate forfeiture was permissible to punish felons, then the lesser restriction of permanent disarmament is also permissible.”

So the same conviction supports a viable as-applied challenge in Philadelphia and a foreclosed one in Los Angeles. The Supreme Court has not resolved the conflict.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: It is worth being precise about what a favorable ruling in this line of cases would and would not do. Range was a civil, pre-enforcement declaratory action brought by a man who wanted to buy a hunting rifle — not a defense raised after a search. Litigating the Second Amendment as a defense to a pending § 922(g)(1) indictment is a different posture with a different risk profile, and in most circuits it is currently foreclosed. Where relief is available administratively under § 925(c), that route has a published standard and a decisionmaker; a constitutional challenge has neither.

What are the penalties for felon in possession?

A knowing violation of § 922(g) is punishable by a fine, imprisonment for not more than 15 years, or both, under 18 U.S.C. § 924(a)(8). That ceiling was raised from ten years in 2022; guidance still stating ten years is out of date.

The Armed Career Criminal Act changes the picture entirely. Under § 924(e)(1), a person who violates § 922(g) and “has three previous convictions . . . for a violent felony or a serious drug offense, or both, committed on occasions different from one another” “shall be fined under this title and imprisoned not less than fifteen years,” and “the court shall not suspend the sentence of, or grant a probationary sentence to, such person.”

The statute defines both predicates. A “serious drug offense” includes federal controlled-substance offenses and state offenses “involving manufacturing, distributing, or possessing with intent to manufacture or distribute” a controlled substance, in each case “for which a maximum term of imprisonment of ten years or more is prescribed by law.” A “violent felony” is a crime punishable by more than one year that “has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another,” or “is burglary, arson, or extortion, involves use of explosives.”

There is no federal statutory minimum for a plain § 922(g) conviction; the guideline range depends on the offense conduct and criminal history. But the gap between a guideline sentence and a fifteen-year mandatory minimum is why the number and character of prior convictions matter more in these cases than almost anything else.

One defense-side development worth knowing: after Rehaif v. United States, 588 U.S. 225 (2019), the government must prove “both that the defendant knew he possessed a firearm and that he knew he belonged to the relevant category of persons barred from possessing a firearm.” Knowledge of prohibited status is an element of the offense, not a technicality — though it is emphatically not a defense that you thought the law permitted you to possess a gun.

Which states let felons own firearms?

The question is framed the wrong way, and the framing causes real harm.

No state can authorize possession that federal law prohibits. A state can restore state rights, and — for a state conviction — that restoration can also lift the federal bar through § 921(a)(20), subject to Caron‘s all-or-nothing rule. For a federal conviction, no state action of any kind has any effect. Someone with a federal conviction who moves to a permissive state, obtains a state permit, and buys a rifle has committed a federal felony with a state-issued paper trail.

State-by-state mechanics — the four categories of approach and what to check in your own state — are covered at how to get gun rights back after felony.

If your disability came from a domestic violence case

The rules are different enough that they get their own treatment. Section 922(g)(9) makes a misdemeanor conviction a lifetime federal bar, and the Supreme Court has read its terms broadly — United States v. Castleman, 572 U.S. 157 (2014) (offensive touching suffices as “physical force”); Voisine v. United States, 579 U.S. 686 (2016) (reckless assault qualifies); United States v. Hayes, 555 U.S. 415 (2009) (the domestic relationship need not be an element of the predicate offense). Section 922(g)(8) covers restraining orders and lasts only as long as the order.

See misdemeanor domestic violence gun rights restoration.

What to do if you are not sure whether you are prohibited

Uncertainty is itself dangerous here, because § 922(g) has no good-faith exception for a mistake about the law.

1. Find out what you were actually convicted of — the statute of conviction and its maximum penalty, not the plea colloquy or your memory. Pull the judgment.
2. Determine whether it was federal or state. That one fact eliminates two of the four routes.
3. Read any relief you already received, word for word. Under Caron, a single retained firearms restriction defeats the whole exemption.
4. Inventory every other potential prohibitor — a restraining order, a drug-related status, a prior misdemeanor domestic violence conviction. People routinely fix one and remain prohibited by another.
5. Do not possess anything while you sort it out, including ammunition, and address firearms already in the household. Henderson provides a lawful path for guns you own; leaving them in a shared closet is not it.
6. Get advice before, not after. The cost of being wrong is measured in years.

Related reading on firearm rights restoration

If the answer for you is “yes, you are prohibited,” the next question is which route out is open, and that depends on which government convicted you. Start at gun rights restoration for the four routes side by side, then go to federal firearm rights restoration if the conviction is federal, or to the state guide to firearm rights restoration if it is not.

For your own state’s statute — what it says, whether it reaches a conviction entered by another sovereign, and what it carves out — see the verified firearm rights restoration by state table. If your disability comes from a domestic-violence conviction rather than a felony, the analysis is different and lives at misdemeanor domestic violence gun rights restoration.

Two things worth knowing before you spend money on any of it. A presidential pardon does restore federal firearm rights, but it does not erase the conviction — see what a pardon does not do. And if the conviction itself is defective, attacking it through a federal § 2255 motion or a writ of coram nobis removes the disability at its source, which no restoration can do. A firearm rights restoration attorney can tell you in one conversation which of these is actually available to you.

If the disability turns out to be federal, the executive side of the analysis starts at clemency lawyers and what does clemency mean, with the specific relief explained at what is a presidential pardon, pardons lawyer, and presidential pardon power. The petition itself is covered at how to get a presidential pardon and federal pardons, and — if a prior petition failed — at clemency denied, what next.

Why work with Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. is a boutique federal criminal defense and appellate firm founded in 2019, with a national federal practice run on an intentionally small caseload. Elizabeth Franklin-Best is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and twelve of the thirteen U.S. Courts of Appeals — every regional circuit (1st–11th) plus the D.C. Circuit — and has handled more than 330 federal proceedings, over 100 of them appeals, with sixteen published decisions as counsel of record. She is recognized by Best Lawyers in America 2026 for Appellate Practice and by Chambers USA 2026 for white-collar litigation.

Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, the firm’s Managing Director, is the author of the Federal Prison Handbook, the Directory of Federal Prisons, Prison Education Guide, and College for Convicts, and serves as Chairman of the Board of the Human Rights Defense Center.

Whether someone is prohibited, and what can be done about it, is a records question before it is an argument. That is the work.

Offices in Columbia and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina; clients nationwide. No outcome can be promised, and this page is general information rather than legal advice.

Talk to a federal defense lawyer

If you are trying to determine whether you are prohibited, or what route out is available, schedule a consultation or call (843) 620-1100.

Frequently Asked Questions About Felons and Firearms

Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026