Having weapons under disability means possessing a firearm or ammunition when federal law says you cannot, and it is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), nine categories of people are barred from shipping, transporting, receiving, or possessing any gun or ammo. If any of them applies to you, a “yes” on ATF Form 4473 blocks the sale, and a firearm in your closet is itself a separate federal crime, whether you ever touch it or not.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 922 – Unlawful Acts
Who Is a Prohibited Person
The nine federal categories are:
- Anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year in prison.
- Fugitives from justice.
- Current unlawful users of, or people addicted to, a controlled substance.
- People a court has found mentally incompetent, or who have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution.
- Undocumented noncitizens and most nonimmigrant visa holders.
- Anyone dishonorably discharged from the military.
- Anyone who has renounced U.S. citizenship.
- People subject to a qualifying domestic violence protective order.
- People convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.
The felony category is the broadest, and the phrase that trips people up is “punishable by.” It does not matter whether you got probation, a suspended sentence, or a few months in county. If the judge could have handed down more than a year, the ban applies. It reaches state and federal convictions alike, including some nonviolent offenses that feel too minor to carry lifetime consequences, and some states apply it to juvenile adjudications as well.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3559 – Sentencing Classification of Offenses
Domestic Violence Creates Two Separate Paths
A misdemeanor conviction is enough on its own. If the victim was a current or former spouse, a co-parent, a cohabitant, a parent or guardian, or someone in a similar position, and the offense involved physical force or a deadly weapon, the ban is permanent. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022 added dating partners to the list, with a narrower rule: if you have no other disqualifying convictions and five years have passed, that particular ban can lift. The five-year window does not extend to any of the other relationships.3Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Misdemeanor Crimes of Domestic Violence Prohibitions
You can also lose your rights without any conviction at all. A protective order takes them away for as long as the order is in effect, provided you got notice and a chance to be heard, the order restrains you from threatening or harassing an intimate partner or their child, and it either finds you a credible threat or explicitly bars you from using physical force. The Supreme Court upheld this prohibition in United States v. Rahimi in 2024.4Supreme Court of the United States. United States v. Rahimi, No. 22-915
Mental Health
The statute uses old language: “adjudicated as a mental defective” or “committed to a mental institution.” In practice, it covers court findings of incompetence to stand trial, verdicts of not guilty by reason of insanity, and involuntary inpatient commitments. Voluntary admissions generally do not count. States differ on whether short emergency holds trigger the federal ban, so if you have been through any involuntary process, assume it may affect your eligibility until you confirm otherwise.
Drug Use, Including State-Legal Marijuana
This is the category that surprises people most, because no conviction is required. Current unlawful drug use alone makes you prohibited, and the ATF has stated that marijuana counts even in states where it is fully legal for medical or recreational use. Marijuana remains Schedule I under federal law. If a licensed dealer knows you hold a state medical marijuana card, the dealer has reasonable cause to believe you are an unlawful user and cannot legally complete the sale, no matter what you write on the form.5Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Open Letter to All Federal Firearms Licensees
The Narrower Categories
A dishonorable discharge is a lifetime ban; lesser bad-paper discharges such as “other than honorable” or “bad conduct” from special courts-martial do not trigger the federal prohibition, though state law may treat them differently.6Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Identify Prohibited Persons Renouncing U.S. citizenship is permanent. Fugitive status applies if you have fled a jurisdiction to avoid prosecution or testimony. Nonimmigrant visa holders are covered, with limited exceptions for accredited diplomats, foreign law enforcement on official business, and people admitted for sporting purposes who hold a valid U.S. hunting license.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 US Code 922 – Unlawful Acts
What Counts as Possession
Two details expand this offense well past what most people picture.
First, ammunition counts. The statute prohibits any firearm “or ammunition.” A single box of cartridges in a closet is the same offense as the rifle itself, and some states run a separate background check at the point of sale for ammunition purchases.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 US Code 922 – Unlawful Acts
Second, you do not have to hold the gun. Federal prosecutors regularly charge “constructive possession,” meaning you knew a firearm was there and had the ability to control it. This comes up in shared households constantly. If you are prohibited and your spouse or roommate owns guns, prosecutors can argue you constructively possessed anything stored in a shared space like a bedroom closet or a living room cabinet. Federal courts have said proximity alone is not enough, but the safe arrangement when a prohibited person lives with a gun owner is storage in a locked container the prohibited person cannot open. A safe with a combination you do not know is the most defensible setup, and several states now require locked storage in this situation by statute.
Penalties
The baseline federal penalty for possession while prohibited is up to 10 years in prison, plus fines.8Department of Justice. Quick Reference to Federal Firearms Laws For anyone with a serious criminal history, the far bigger risk is the Armed Career Criminal Act. Three or more prior convictions for violent felonies or serious drug offenses trigger a 15-year mandatory minimum. There is no time limit on how old those priors can be, and they can arise from concurrent sentences. The jump from a 10-year ceiling to a 15-year floor is one of the steepest sentencing cliffs in federal law.
A conviction also permanently forecloses any future path to restoring gun rights and adds another felony to your record, which reaches into employment, housing, professional licensing, and federal benefits. In some jurisdictions, victims of gun violence committed with an illegally possessed firearm can pursue civil damages against the person who had it.
Buying or Transferring for Someone Who Cannot
If you buy a gun on behalf of a prohibited person, that is a straw purchase. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022 created a standalone federal straw-purchase offense under 18 U.S.C. § 932, with penalties up to 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. If the gun is later used in a felony, an act of terrorism, or drug trafficking, the ceiling rises to 25 years.9Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Don’t Lie for the Other Guy
Separately, 18 U.S.C. § 922(d) makes it illegal to sell or transfer a firearm to anyone you know, or have reasonable cause to believe, is a prohibited person. It applies to licensed dealers and private individuals equally, and carries up to 10 years. “Reasonable cause to believe” means willful ignorance is no defense: if the signs were obvious and you did not ask, you are still exposed.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 922 – Unlawful Acts Some states now require background checks on all transfers, including sales between friends and family, typically by routing the transfer through a licensed dealer.
Getting Your Rights Back
Restoration is possible in theory. The path depends on why you lost your rights, and it is harder than most people expect.
On paper, 18 U.S.C. § 925(c) lets any prohibited person apply to the Attorney General for relief. The standard is that the applicant “will not be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety.”11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 925 – Exceptions: Relief From Disabilities Since the early 1990s, though, Congress has attached a rider to ATF appropriations that bars the agency from spending any money processing individual applications. The federal relief valve exists in the statute but has been sealed off for more than three decades.
That leaves state mechanisms: pardons, expungements, and petitions to restore civil rights. Each state sets its own rules, waiting periods, and evidentiary standards. Mental health restorations typically require a petition to a state court and a current psychological evaluation showing you no longer pose a danger.
Here is the point people miss: getting your state gun rights back does not automatically restore your federal rights. Federal law excludes a conviction from the prohibited-person calculation only if it has been expunged, set aside, or pardoned, or if civil rights have been restored. Federal courts have read this narrowly. In some circuits, all the major civil rights, including voting, jury service, and holding public office, must be restored for the exclusion to apply. Restoring only the firearm right, while other rights remain limited, may not clear you federally. A presidential pardon clears a federal disability; a governor’s pardon clears a state one and reaches the federal ban only if it restores civil rights fully, without any firearms-related carve-out. An expungement that says “except for firearms purposes” leaves the federal ban intact.
If a Background Check Denies You in Error
The National Instant Criminal Background Check System is not always right. Mistaken identity, stale records, and convictions that were expunged but never updated in the database all produce wrongful denials.
You can ask the FBI for the reason for your denial, and it must respond within five business days. From there, you can file a formal challenge through the FBI’s electronic system using the transaction number from the denied purchase, along with documentation such as expungement paperwork or proof of rights restoration. The FBI has 60 calendar days to sustain or overturn the denial.12Federal Bureau of Investigation. Challenges / Appeals
If the FBI sustains the denial and you still believe it was wrong, 18 U.S.C. § 925A gives you the right to sue. Anyone denied because of erroneous information, or who was not actually a prohibited person, can bring a civil action to order the transfer approved and the records corrected. The court can award attorney’s fees to the prevailing party.13Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 US Code 925A – Remedy for Erroneous Denial of Firearm
Where the Constitutional Challenges Stand
The legal ground under these disabilities shifted twice in three years. In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), the Supreme Court held that any modern gun regulation must be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” That set off a wave of challenges to § 922(g). The Third Circuit struck down the lifetime ban as applied to a man convicted of food-stamp fraud in Range v. Attorney General, finding no historical tradition of disarming someone like him.14United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Range v. Attorney General, No. 21-2835 The Fifth Circuit reached a similar conclusion about the drug-user ban in United States v. Daniels.
Then in 2024, Rahimi pulled back from the most aggressive readings of Bruen and upheld the domestic-violence protective order provision, citing historical surety and “going armed” laws.4Supreme Court of the United States. United States v. Rahimi, No. 22-915 The Court sent Range and Daniels back to the lower courts for reconsideration.
Where that leaves the law: the domestic-violence provisions appear secure. The felon-in-possession ban applied to violent offenders is almost certainly constitutional. The blanket application of the felony ban to nonviolent offenders decades removed from a conviction remains under active challenge, and the drug-user ban is similarly vulnerable, particularly as marijuana legalization spreads. If you think your disability may be unconstitutional as applied to your situation, that is worth raising with a firearms attorney. It is not a defense you can rely on until a court has ruled in your favor.