Can You Buy a Gun With a Felony: Federal Ban, Exceptions, and Penalties

No. If you have a felony conviction, federal law bars you from buying, receiving, or possessing a firearm or ammunition, and the question of whether you can buy a gun with a felony on your record has the same answer whether the offense was violent or not. The prohibition applies to anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year in prison, which covers virtually every felony. A violation now carries up to 15 years in federal prison. Narrow exceptions exist and a few paths to restore rights are possible, but the default is a permanent ban.

What Triggers the Federal Ban

The Gun Control Act prohibits firearm possession by anyone “convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.”¹ The key word is “punishable,” not “punished.” What matters is the maximum sentence the offense carries under the law, not what the judge actually gave you. If you got probation for a felony that could have sent you to prison for three years, you are still prohibited.

The ban is not limited to violent crimes. Tax evasion, wire fraud, and drug offenses all trigger the same prohibition as armed robbery. Convictions from state, federal, military, and foreign courts all count. And the ban covers ammunition as well as firearms. A single round in a drawer is enough for a federal charge.

Convictions That Don’t Count

Federal law carves out two categories of offenses that fall outside the ban even if they carry sentences over one year. The first is business-related crimes like antitrust violations and restraints of trade. The second is any offense a state classifies as a misdemeanor and punishes by two years or less.² Some states label offenses as misdemeanors even when they carry up to three years. If the state calls it a misdemeanor and the maximum is two years or less, the federal ban doesn’t apply. If the maximum tops two years, the misdemeanor label won’t save you.

How the Ban Gets Enforced at the Gun Counter

Licensed dealers are required to run every sale through the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The buyer fills out a federal form, the dealer submits the information, and the system checks records for prohibiting convictions and other disqualifiers.³ A denial stops the sale. A buyer who thinks the denial was wrong can appeal to the FBI.

Federal law does not require background checks for private sales between two individuals who are not licensed dealers. That gap does not change the underlying prohibition. A person with a felony conviction who buys a gun through a private sale has still committed a federal crime by receiving and possessing it. The background check is a screen. The illegality attaches to the possession, no matter how the gun was obtained.

Restoring Firearm Rights After a Felony

The statute contains one meaningful escape valve. A conviction does not count if it has been expunged, set aside, or pardoned, or if the person’s civil rights have been restored. There is a catch: if the expungement, pardon, or restoration order specifically says the person still cannot possess firearms, the ban stays in place.²

In practice, the path runs through either a governor’s pardon or a state court process, and the rules vary dramatically by state. Some states let people with felony convictions petition for restoration after completing their sentence, parole, and probation, typically with evidence of rehabilitation, character references, and a clean record during a waiting period. Others impose a lifetime ban unless the governor grants clemency. The available process depends on the state where the conviction occurred and the state where you now live.

Federal law technically allows the ATF to grant relief from firearms disabilities through an application. Congress has refused to fund that program since 1992, and the Department of Justice has acknowledged that the ATF cannot process individual applications without an appropriation.⁴ For someone with a federal conviction and no state restoration option, that route is closed.

The Domestic Violence Misdemeanor Ban

A felony is not the only conviction that ends firearm rights. The Lautenberg Amendment added a separate prohibition for anyone convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. It is a federal felony for that person to ship, transport, possess, or receive firearms or ammunition.⁵ Unlike the felony ban, this one applies even when the underlying offense carried a short sentence, and it applies retroactively to convictions from before the amendment was enacted in 1996. A minor assault plea from decades ago against a spouse or family member can still be a permanent bar today.

The Antique Firearms Exception

Federal law treats “antique firearms” as a separate category, outside the Gun Control Act’s definition of “firearm.” That includes any firearm manufactured in or before 1898, along with certain replicas that do not fire modern fixed ammunition and muzzle-loading weapons that use black powder and cannot accept fixed ammunition.⁶ Prohibited persons are not federally barred from possessing antiques.

The exception is narrower than it sounds. Muzzle-loaders built on the frame or receiver of a modern firearm, or that can be readily converted to fire fixed ammunition, do not qualify. The ATF classifies certain muzzle-loading models as firearms rather than antiques. And state law may still bar a person with a felony conviction from possessing black powder weapons or antiques even where federal law does not. Anyone considering this route should check state law first.

Living in a Household With Firearms

People with felony convictions often ask whether they can live with someone who legally owns guns. The answer turns on constructive possession. You do not have to be holding a firearm or even touching it to “possess” it under federal law. If prosecutors can show you knew a gun was in the home and had the ability to exercise control over it, that can be enough for a conviction.

Courts weigh factors like who was head of the household, where the firearm was stored, who had access, and whether the prohibited person took steps to conceal the weapon. A gun on a shared nightstand is a much bigger problem than a gun locked in a safe only the legal owner can open. The safest arrangement is to store every firearm and every round of ammunition in a locked container the prohibited person cannot access, and to make sure that person never has the key, combination, or biometric enrollment.

Penalties If You’re Caught

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022 raised the maximum penalty for a prohibited person who possesses a firearm or ammunition from 10 years to 15 years in federal prison.⁷ A conviction also carries a potential fine of up to $250,000.⁸ For repeat offenders with three or more prior convictions for violent felonies or serious drug offenses, the Armed Career Criminal Act imposes a 15-year mandatory minimum with no parole.⁹

Federal prosecutors regularly charge felon-in-possession cases based on ammunition alone, with no gun recovered.¹⁰ State charges can stack on top of federal charges, and many states treat unauthorized possession by a person with a felony record as a separate felony with its own sentence.

An Unsettled Constitutional Question

The Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022) changed how courts evaluate gun laws, requiring the government to show that a modern restriction is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. In United States v. Rahimi (2024), the Court clarified that a modern law can survive if it is “relevantly similar” to historical laws rather than an exact match.¹¹ The Third Circuit’s en banc decision in Range v. Attorney General held that permanently disarming a man convicted of food stamp fraud violated the Second Amendment, because the government could not point to a historical tradition of disarming people like him.¹²

The federal circuits are split on how the felon-in-possession ban applies to non-violent offenders, and the Supreme Court has not resolved the question. Until it does, the ban remains enforceable across the country, and anyone with a felony conviction should treat it as fully in effect.