Federal Firearms & Weapons Offenses: A Federal Defense Lawyer’s Guide

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

Federal firearms charges carry severe, often mandatory penalties — and they frequently arrive attached to a drug case, a violent-crime case, or a routine traffic stop. Which statute the government selects can mean the difference between probation eligibility and decades of mandatory time, which is why a federal gun crime lawyer belongs in the case while those charging choices are still open. At Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C., we defend individuals against federal weapons charges nationwide.

Federal firearms offenses are prosecuted principally under 18 U.S.C. §§ 922 and 924 — felon in possession, using or carrying a firearm during another crime, and straw purchasing and trafficking. Each has distinct elements, and several carry mandatory minimum sentences.

Firearms law is moving faster than almost any other area of federal criminal law, and our defense work tracks it case by case: the legality of the search, the proof of knowing possession, the validity of every predicate, and the constitutional questions still being litigated after Bruen. Our principal attorney, Elizabeth Franklin-Best, has appeared in more than 330 federal proceedings, including over 100 appeals in all twelve federal circuits and at the United States Supreme Court, and she maintains a nationwide federal post-conviction practice that reaches the mandatory-minimum and predicate questions at the heart of firearms cases. She holds Best Lawyers in America 2026 recognition in Appellate Practice, and Chambers USA ranks the firm in its 2026 survey for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations. If you are facing a federal firearms investigation or charge, we invite you to schedule a paid, one-hour initial consultation.

Federal Firearms Offenses: Quick Answer

Question	Answer
What are federal firearms offenses?	Weapons crimes under 18 U.S.C. §§ 922 and 924 — including felon in possession, using a firearm during a crime, and straw purchasing.
What must the government prove?	The elements of the specific statute, including knowing possession and, after Rehaif, knowledge of the prohibited status for § 922(g) charges.
What penalties can apply?	Felon in possession carries up to 15 years; § 924(c) carries consecutive mandatory minimums; the Armed Career Criminal Act adds a 15-year minimum.
Are firearms charges often added to other cases?	Yes. Federal weapons counts are frequently charged alongside drug and violent-crime cases, sharply increasing exposure.
Where does the defense start?	With a paid, one-hour initial consultation covering the stop or search, the possession evidence, and any mandatory-minimum exposure.

Key Takeaways

• Federal firearms offenses are prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. §§ 922 and 924.
• Felon in possession under § 922(g) requires knowing possession and, after Rehaif, knowledge of the prohibited status.
• Section 924(c) — using or carrying a firearm during another federal crime — carries consecutive mandatory minimum sentences.
• The Armed Career Criminal Act imposes a fifteen-year mandatory minimum on certain repeat offenders.
• Firearms counts are frequently added to drug and violent-crime cases, dramatically increasing exposure.
• The Fourth Amendment is central — much firearms evidence comes from searches and stops.
• “Possession” requires dominion and control; mere proximity to a firearm is not possession.
• Charging decisions and mandatory minimum exposure make an early, strategic defense essential.
• After Bruen and Rahimi, the circuits are split on whether § 922(g)(1) is unconstitutional as applied to some people with nonviolent convictions.
• Under Erlinger v. United States, a jury — not a judge — must find that ACCA predicate offenses were committed on different occasions.
• In Garland v. Cargill, the Supreme Court held that a bump stock does not make a rifle a statutory machinegun.

What Are Federal Firearms Offenses?

Federal firearms offenses are weapons crimes prosecuted by the federal government under Title 18, principally 18 U.S.C. §§ 922 and 924. While most weapons offenses are prosecuted under state law, the federal government takes cases involving prohibited persons, firearms used in connection with other federal crimes, illegal trafficking, and certain regulated weapons.

Two features define federal firearms practice. The first is the prevalence of mandatory minimum sentences — several firearms statutes set a sentencing floor that a judge generally cannot go below. The second is that firearms counts are very often add-on charges: a firearm found during a drug investigation, a traffic stop, or a violent-crime case generates a separate weapons count that can transform the defendant’s overall exposure. Understanding how a firearms count interacts with the rest of a case is essential.

The core federal firearms offenses our firm defends are set out below, each governed by its own elements and, in most cases, its own sentencing rules.

The Federal Firearms Statutes

• Felon in possession of a firearm (18 U.S.C. § 922(g)). The prohibited-person possession statute, and the most commonly charged federal firearms offense; it reaches not only people with prior felony convictions but every prohibited category, from unlawful drug users to people subject to qualifying domestic-violence protective orders.
• Using or carrying a firearm during a federal crime (18 U.S.C. § 924(c)). The statute that adds consecutive mandatory minimums — and, in successive-conviction cases, decades of them — whenever a firearm is used, carried, or possessed in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime or a crime of violence.
• Straw purchasing and firearms trafficking (18 U.S.C. §§ 922(a)(6), 932, and 933). The prosecution of false-statement straw purchases and the stand-alone trafficking offenses the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act added in 2022, which reach buyers, intermediaries, and sellers alike.

Firearms cases routinely intersect with our federal drug crimes practice and the broader field of federal criminal defense.

What “Possession” Means

Most federal firearms charges turn on the concept of possession, and it is more precise than it sounds. Possession can be actual — the firearm on the defendant’s person — or constructive — the defendant having the power and the intention to exercise dominion and control over the firearm, even without holding it.

What possession is not is mere proximity. A firearm found in a shared apartment, in a vehicle with several occupants, or in a common space is not automatically possessed by everyone nearby. The government must prove that the particular defendant knowingly possessed the firearm — that they had dominion and control over it. In multi-occupant settings, that is a genuine, contestable question, and it is one of the most important defenses in firearms cases.

Applied Insight: Constructive possession is where many firearms cases are won. When a gun is found in a car or a home used by more than one person, the government must tie it to the defendant specifically. Fingerprint and DNA results, the gun’s location, and access by others are all evidence the defense develops to break the chain to the client.

The Rehaif Knowledge Requirement

For the most commonly charged federal firearms offense — felon in possession and the other prohibited-person categories under § 922(g) — the Supreme Court’s decision in Rehaif v. United States added a significant knowledge requirement.

Before Rehaif, the government had to prove only that a defendant knowingly possessed a firearm. After Rehaif, the government must prove two kinds of knowledge: that the defendant knew he possessed a firearm, and that the defendant knew he belonged to the relevant prohibited category — for example, that he knew he had been convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year in prison. This requirement applies across all the § 922(g) categories.

In most cases, the government can prove a defendant knew of a prior felony conviction, but not always, and the requirement is an actual element the government must satisfy. It is one of several doctrinal tools a felon-in-possession defense uses, and where the record leaves the defendant’s knowledge of his status genuinely in doubt, it can be decisive. The Supreme Court announced the rule in Rehaif v. United States, 588 U.S. 225 (2019), and it applies to every § 922(g) category.

The Second Amendment After Bruen and Rahimi

No development has unsettled federal firearms law more than the Supreme Court’s adoption of a history-and-tradition test for Second Amendment claims. Under that framework, once the Amendment’s plain text covers the regulated conduct, the government must justify its regulation by showing it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. In United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024), the Court upheld § 922(g)(8) — the domestic-violence restraining order prohibition — against a facial challenge, reasoning that history supports temporarily disarming individuals found to pose a credible threat to others. Rahimi confirmed the framework while signaling that it is not a one-way ratchet against gun laws.

The live battleground is § 922(g)(1), the felon-in-possession statute, and the circuits have divided over as-applied challenges. In Range v. Attorney General, 124 F.4th 218 (3d Cir. 2024) (en banc), the Third Circuit held § 922(g)(1) unconstitutional as applied to a man whose only disqualifying conviction was a decades-old, nonviolent food-stamp-fraud offense, because the government identified no historical tradition of permanently disarming people like him. The Fifth Circuit permits the same kind of individualized historical inquiry, though it upheld the statute on the facts before it in United States v. Diaz, 116 F.4th 458 (5th Cir. 2024). On the other side, the en banc Ninth Circuit in United States v. Duarte, 137 F.4th 743 (9th Cir. 2025), aligned itself with the Fourth, Eighth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits and held that § 922(g)(1) may be applied categorically — even to nonviolent felons.

For a person charged under § 922(g)(1), the practical takeaways are two. First, whether a constitutional defense exists may depend on geography — the same prior conviction that supports an as-applied challenge in Philadelphia may not in Los Angeles. Second, because the Supreme Court has yet to resolve the split, the argument should be raised and preserved in every circuit, including those that currently reject it. We evaluate the Second Amendment posture of every felon-in-possession case we handle.

The same as-applied debate reaches beyond felons. Section 922(g)(3) bars firearm possession by an unlawful user of a controlled substance, and the Fifth Circuit has held that prohibition unconstitutional as applied to people who used marijuana but were not intoxicated when they possessed a firearm — reasoning that history does not support disarming a person based on drug-user status alone. The Supreme Court decided the constitutionality of the § 922(g)(3) ban in United States v. Hemani, holding the ban unconstitutional as applied to a marijuana user whose drug use was never tied to any danger. The Court was careful to keep the ruling narrow, expressly declining to decide § 922(g)(1), so the felon-in-possession question remains exactly where the circuit split left it. As with § 922(g)(1), the constitutional defense in a § 922(g)(3) case is fact-specific and circuit-dependent, and it should be raised and preserved while the law is unsettled.

Mandatory Minimums in Firearms Cases

Mandatory minimum sentences dominate federal firearms practice, and two provisions in particular drive the exposure.

Section 924(c) imposes consecutive mandatory minimum sentences — generally five, seven, or ten years depending on whether a firearm was used, brandished, or discharged — when a firearm is connected to a drug trafficking crime or a crime of violence. Because a § 924(c) sentence must run consecutively to the sentence for the underlying offense, it is added on top of everything else.

The Armed Career Criminal Act, § 924(e), imposes a fifteen-year mandatory minimum on a defendant convicted of felon in possession who has three or more qualifying prior convictions for violent felonies or serious drug offenses. Whether a prior conviction “qualifies” under the ACCA is a heavily litigated, technical question, and a successful challenge can remove the fifteen-year floor entirely.

Because these provisions can add or impose years of mandatory time, identifying every available challenge to them — to the § 924(c) predicate, to the ACCA prior convictions — is a defining task of federal firearms defense.

Applied Insight: Whether a prior conviction “counts” under the Armed Career Criminal Act, and whether a charged offense is a valid § 924(c) predicate, are intricate legal questions that have shifted considerably with Supreme Court case law. These are not technicalities — a successful challenge can erase a fifteen-year mandatory minimum or a consecutive § 924(c) term.

Section 924(c) Stacking After the First Step Act

For decades, § 924(c) produced some of the harshest sentences in federal law through “stacking”: the 25-year enhanced minimum for a “second or subsequent” § 924(c) conviction applied even when all the counts were charged in a single indictment, so a first-time defendant convicted of three counts faced 55 years of consecutive mandatory time. Section 403 of the First Step Act of 2018 ended that practice — the 25-year enhancement now applies only when the defendant already had a final § 924(c) conviction before committing the new offense.

The Supreme Court extended that reform’s reach in Hewitt v. United States, 606 U.S. 419 (2025), holding that the Act’s gentler penalties apply to any defendant whose pre-Act § 924(c) sentence has been vacated and who is resentenced after the Act took effect — because a vacated sentence is no longer a sentence that “has been imposed.” For clients still serving stacked terms, vacatur on any ground can now carry the full benefit of the anti-stacking amendment, which makes post-conviction strategy and resentencing posture an integral part of § 924(c) defense.

ACCA Practice After Erlinger

The Armed Career Criminal Act applies its fifteen-year minimum only when three qualifying priors were “committed on occasions different from one another” — and the question of who decides that changed in 2024. In Erlinger v. United States, 602 U.S. 821 (2024), the Supreme Court held that the Fifth and Sixth Amendments require a unanimous jury, not a sentencing judge, to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the predicate offenses occurred on separate occasions.

Erlinger reshapes ACCA litigation in practical ways. The government must now plead and prove the occasions question like any other element, with admissible evidence rather than bare references to a presentence report — a real burden where the priors are old, the records thin, or the offenses arguably part of one episode. Defendants sentenced under judge-found occasions determinations may have appellate or collateral arguments. And the decision adds a second front to the traditional ACCA fight over whether each prior categorically qualifies as a violent felony or serious drug offense. We treat every proposed ACCA enhancement as a set of contestable propositions, never a foregone conclusion.

The Fourth Amendment in Firearms Cases

Federal firearms cases are, like drug cases, frequently search-and-seizure cases. The firearm is usually found during a traffic stop, patdown, vehicle search, or home search. The Fourth Amendment governs each of them.

A stop made without lawful justification, a frisk that exceeded its lawful scope, a vehicle search without probable cause or valid consent, a warrant unsupported by probable cause, or an unlawfully prolonged detention can each render the firearm inadmissible. When the firearm itself is the fruit of an unlawful search, suppressing it can end a firearms prosecution. A rigorous review of every stop and search is a priority from the first day of the defense.

Bump Stocks, Cargill, and Other Recent Statutory Changes

Two other developments belong on any current map of federal firearms law. In Garland v. Cargill, 602 U.S. 406 (2024), the Supreme Court held that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a “machinegun” under 26 U.S.C. § 5845(b), because it cannot fire more than one shot by a single function of the trigger — and that ATF exceeded its statutory authority when its 2018 rule classified bump stocks as machineguns. Cargill matters beyond bump stocks: it is a forceful reminder that agency reclassifications cannot expand a criminal statute’s definitions, an argument with continuing force in prosecutions built on ATF interpretive rules.

In the other direction, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022 expanded federal firearms enforcement. It created stand-alone straw-purchasing and firearms-trafficking offenses at 18 U.S.C. §§ 932 and 933, each carrying up to 15 years (25 where terrorism or trafficking aggravators apply), and it raised the statutory maximum for § 922(g) violations from 10 to 15 years. Prosecutors are using the new trafficking statutes actively, and they reach buyers, intermediaries, and sellers alike — including people whose role in a transaction was peripheral.

Restoring Firearms Rights: § 925(c) and § 921(a)(20)

Federal law has always contained a path back to firearms eligibility for people who have lost it, and after years of dormancy that path is open again. Two provisions matter. Under 18 U.S.C. § 925(c), a person subject to a federal firearms disability may apply for relief on a showing that they will not act in a manner dangerous to public safety and that granting relief is not contrary to the public interest. Under 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(20), a prior conviction does not count as a § 922(g)(1) predicate at all if the jurisdiction of conviction has expunged it, set it aside, or pardoned it, or has restored the person’s civil rights — unless that restoration expressly preserved a firearms bar.

The § 925(c) remedy was effectively frozen for three decades. Beginning in 1992, Congress barred the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from spending any appropriated funds to process individual applications, and the Supreme Court held in United States v. Bean, 537 U.S. 71 (2002), that without ATF action there was no decision for a court to review — leaving applicants with no avenue at all. That is what changed in 2025. The Department of Justice reclaimed the relief authority from ATF and began standing up a process to adjudicate applications directly, and the Attorney General has since granted restoration to a series of applicants, with further grants published in 2026. Section 925(c) is no longer a dead letter, and for a client whose disability rests on an old or nonviolent conviction it is now a live, if demanding, option to evaluate alongside any litigation defense.

These restoration routes also connect directly to the merits of a felon-in-possession charge. If a prior conviction was expunged, set aside, or accompanied by a full restoration of civil rights that did not carve out firearms, it may not qualify as a § 922(g)(1) predicate in the first place — a defense that turns on the precise law of the convicting jurisdiction and the exact language of any restoration document. We examine the status of every predicate conviction early, because a charge that depends on a disqualified prior can sometimes be defeated before the constitutional questions are ever reached.

Penalties for Federal Firearms Offenses

Penalties vary by statute. Felon in possession under § 922(g) carries a statutory maximum of up to 15 years. Section 924(c) carries consecutive mandatory minimums of five, seven, or ten years, and higher terms for certain firearms. The Armed Career Criminal Act imposes a fifteen-year mandatory minimum. Straw purchasing and firearms trafficking offenses carry their own substantial penalties. Fines, supervised release, and forfeiture of firearms also apply.

Above any mandatory minimum, the advisory United States Sentencing Guidelines drive the sentence, with the type of firearm, the number of firearms, the connection to other offenses, and the defendant’s criminal history all influencing the range. Because firearms counts are so often added to other cases, the combined exposure can be severe — and contesting the firearms count, the mandatory-minimum enhancements, and the Guidelines calculations is essential.

Defenses to Federal Firearms Charges

No two firearms cases are alike, and no lawyer can promise a result. But several defense themes recur, and matching them to the evidence is the core of building a strategy:

• Fourth Amendment violations. An unlawful stop, frisk, search, or warrant can render the firearm inadmissible.
• Lack of possession. The defendant did not have the dominion and control that possession requires; mere proximity is not possession.
• Lack of knowledge. The defendant did not know a firearm was present, or — for § 922(g) — did not know of the prohibited status.
• No valid predicate. For § 924(c), the underlying offense is not a valid crime of violence or drug trafficking crime.
• ACCA challenges. The prior convictions do not qualify under the Armed Career Criminal Act.
• Constitutional challenges. After Bruen and Rahimi, as-applied Second Amendment challenges to § 922(g)(1) succeed in some circuits and should be preserved in all of them.
• Mandatory-minimum and sentencing challenges. Contesting the § 924(c) and ACCA enhancements and the Guidelines calculations.
• Identity and attribution. The government cannot prove that the defendant, rather than another person, possessed the firearm.

The right combination depends entirely on the facts. Our role is to test the government’s proof element by element, develop a favorable record, and press every legitimate defense during the investigation, in pretrial motions, at trial, and on appeal.

Why Work With Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C.?

Federal firearms cases reward defense lawyers who litigate the Fourth Amendment hard, who understand constructive possession and the Rehaif requirement, and who know how to challenge the § 924(c) and Armed Career Criminal Act mandatory minimums.

As the author of Reversing Your Criminal Conviction and an attorney admitted before the United States Supreme Court and all twelve federal circuits, Elizabeth Franklin-Best brings appellate-grade analysis to firearms questions — exactly what a field reshaped by Bruen, Rahimi, and Erlinger demands. Christopher Zoukis, our Managing Director, works on the federal sentencing and Bureau of Prisons side of these cases, where mandatory minimums and Guidelines disputes play out. Through standing admissions and pro hac vice appearances, we take firearms cases in district courts nationwide.

We make no promises about results — no honest firm can. What we deliver is exacting, current, fully litigated defense work: suppression issues developed early, predicates and priors attacked on the law, and constitutional arguments preserved at every step. If a federal firearms charge or investigation is in front of you, schedule a paid, one-hour initial consultation with our team.

Talk With a Federal Gun Crime Lawyer

Firearms counts harden fast: predicates get charged, § 851-style enhancement decisions are made, and constitutional arguments not raised are arguments waived. Involving a federal gun crime lawyer at the investigation stage keeps the widest set of defenses on the table. To go over your situation confidentially, schedule your paid, one-hour initial consultation today.