Felon in Possession of a Firearm Defense: 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)

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

Felon in possession of a firearm is the most commonly charged federal firearms offense — and one with more defenses than many people realize. If you are charged under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), what your felon in possession lawyer does in the first weeks often decides the case, because everything turns on knowing possession, on the knowledge requirement the Supreme Court announced in Rehaif, and on the legality of the search. At Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C., we defend individuals against federal felon-in-possession allegations nationwide as part of our federal firearms offenses practice.

Section 922(g) makes it a crime for a felon — and several other categories of prohibited persons — to possess a firearm or ammunition that has moved in interstate commerce. The penalties are serious, and for some defendants the Armed Career Criminal Act raises the exposure dramatically.

Few areas of federal law are moving faster than firearms law, and we build § 922(g) defenses on the law as it stands now — not as it stood a year ago. 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 center of firearms cases. She was named a 2026 “Best Lawyer” in Appellate Practice by Best Lawyers in America, and Chambers USA ranks the firm in its 2026 guide for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations. We approach every § 922(g) case by testing the government’s proof of possession and knowledge, the constitutionality of the search, and — where the record supports it — the constitutionality of the statute’s application itself. If you are facing a felon-in-possession investigation or charge, your first step should be a paid, one-hour initial consultation.

Felon in Possession: Quick Answer

Question	Answer
What is felon in possession?	A prohibited person — including a felon — knowingly possessing a firearm or ammunition that has moved in interstate commerce, under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g).
What must the government prove?	That the defendant knew he possessed a firearm, knew he belonged to a prohibited category, and that the firearm moved in interstate commerce.
What penalties can apply?	Up to 15 years in federal prison — and a fifteen-year mandatory minimum if the Armed Career Criminal Act applies.
Is knowledge of felon status required?	Yes. After Rehaif, the government must prove the defendant knew he belonged to the prohibited category.
Can the charge be fought?	Often, yes — through suppression, possession, knowledge, ACCA, and Second Amendment challenges. A paid, one-hour initial consultation is where we sort out which apply to your record.

Key Takeaways

• Felon in possession under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) is the most commonly charged federal firearms offense.
• Section 922(g) reaches nine categories of prohibited persons — felons and others — not just convicted felons.
• The government must prove knowing possession of a firearm and, after Rehaif, knowledge of the prohibited status.
• Possession can be actual or constructive, but it always requires dominion and control — mere proximity is not possession.
• The firearm must have moved in or affected interstate commerce — a required element.
• Felon in possession carries up to 15 years; the Armed Career Criminal Act imposes a fifteen-year mandatory minimum.
• The legality of the search that produced the firearm is frequently the decisive issue.
• Possession, knowledge, the search, and the ACCA enhancement are the central defense battlegrounds.

What Is Felon in Possession?

“Felon in possession” is the common name for the prohibited-person possession offense under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). The statute makes it unlawful for a person in any of nine enumerated categories to possess a firearm or ammunition in or affecting interstate commerce.

The most familiar category is a person convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment for more than one year — a felon. But § 922(g) reaches others as well, including fugitives, unlawful users of controlled substances, persons subject to certain domestic-violence restraining orders, persons convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence, and others. The offense is the same in structure across the categories: a prohibited person, knowingly possessing a firearm or ammunition that has the required connection to interstate commerce.

Felon in possession is the workhorse of federal firearms enforcement. It is straightforward for the government to charge whenever a firearm is found in the possession of someone with a qualifying record. But “straightforward to charge” is not “easy to prove” — the statute has real elements, and each is a point of defense.

The Elements of a § 922(g) Charge

To convict of felon in possession, the government must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt: that the defendant had previously been convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year in prison (or fell within another prohibited category); that the defendant knowingly possessed a firearm or ammunition; that the defendant knew he belonged to the prohibited category; and that the firearm or ammunition had moved in or affected interstate or foreign commerce.

Each element is contestable. Possession requires dominion and control. The knowledge elements — knowing possession of the firearm and knowledge of the prohibited status — are real requirements the government must satisfy. And the interstate commerce element, while usually provable, must still be established. A defense that holds the government to every element, rather than treating the charge as a formality, is the foundation of a felon-in-possession case.

The Rehaif Knowledge Requirement

The Supreme Court’s decision in Rehaif v. United States, 588 U.S. 225 (2019), reshaped the felon-in-possession offense. The Court held that to convict under § 922(g), the government must prove the defendant knew two things: that he possessed a firearm, and that he belonged to the relevant prohibited category — for a felon, that he knew he had been convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year in prison.

Before Rehaif, the knowledge requirement was understood to reach only the possession of the firearm. After Rehaif, knowledge of the prohibited status is a separate element. In a typical felon case, the government may readily prove a defendant knew of a prior felony conviction — but it remains an element that must be proven, and in some cases — for example, where a prior conviction’s potential sentence was not clearly understood, or where another prohibited-person category is at issue — the requirement is genuinely contestable. The Rehaif element is one of several tools a careful felon-in-possession defense uses.

Preservation is the hard lesson of the post-Rehaif years. In Greer v. United States, 593 U.S. 503 (2021), the Supreme Court held that a defendant who failed to raise a Rehaif objection at trial or in a plea faces plain-error review and must show a reasonable probability the outcome would have differed — a heavy lift for anyone who has served more than a year on the prior. The practical rule for the defense is simple: put the knowledge issue on the record, at the right moment, in every case where it has any footing.

Applied Insight: Rehaif matters most outside the simple felon case. For categories such as unlawful drug user or a person under a particular court order, whether the defendant knew he fell within the prohibited category at the time of possession can be a real, contested question — and the government must prove it.

The Possession Element

Possession is often the most genuinely contested element in a felon-in-possession case. The government must prove the defendant knowingly possessed the firearm — and possession is a precise legal concept.

Possession can be actual, where the firearm is on the defendant’s person, or constructive, where the defendant has the power and the intention to exercise dominion and control over the firearm even without physically holding it. What it is not is mere proximity. A firearm found in a vehicle with multiple occupants, in a shared residence, or in a common area is not automatically possessed by the defendant. The government must connect the firearm to the particular defendant.

That connection is where many felon-in-possession cases are defended. Whose fingerprints or DNA are on the firearm; where, exactly, it was found; who else had access to the space; and what the surrounding evidence shows about control are all questions the defense develops. Where the government cannot tie the firearm to the defendant beyond proximity, the possession element fails.

Applied Insight: The constructive-possession defense is strongest in shared spaces — a car, an apartment, a household with several adults. The government’s burden is to prove this defendant exercised dominion and control over this firearm. Forensic results, the firearm’s exact location, and others’ access are the evidence that breaks, or fails to break, that connection.

The Armed Career Criminal Act

For some felon-in-possession defendants, the most consequential issue in the case is the Armed Career Criminal Act, § 924(e). The ACCA imposes a fifteen-year mandatory minimum — and a maximum of life — on a defendant convicted of felon in possession who has three or more prior convictions for a “violent felony” or a “serious drug offense” committed on different occasions.

Whether a prior conviction qualifies as an ACCA predicate is a heavily litigated, technical area of law. Courts apply a “categorical approach” that compares the elements of the prior offense to the federal definitions, and the case law — particularly on what counts as a “violent felony” — has shifted significantly through Supreme Court decisions. Whether prior offenses were committed on “different occasions” is also litigable. A successful challenge to even one of the three required predicates removes the ACCA entirely, taking the case from a fifteen-year mandatory floor back to the ordinary statutory range. That makes the ACCA analysis one of the most important parts of a felon-in-possession defense.

The “different occasions” requirement now carries a constitutional dimension as well. In Erlinger v. United States, 602 U.S. 821 (2024), the Supreme Court held that a unanimous jury — not a sentencing judge — must find beyond a reasonable doubt that the three predicates were committed on occasions different from one another. That moves the occasions question into the world of pleading, proof, and trial strategy: aging convictions with thin records become harder for the government to use, and defendants sentenced on judge-found occasions determinations may have arguments on appeal or in post-conviction proceedings.

Second Amendment Challenges After Bruen and Rahimi

Since New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), a firearms regulation must be justified by the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation once the Second Amendment’s plain text covers the conduct. United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024), applied that test to uphold § 922(g)(8) — the restraining-order prohibition — against a facial attack, but the Court has not yet said how the framework applies to § 922(g)(1) and the people it permanently disarms.

The courts of appeals have answered that open question three different ways. The en banc Third Circuit’s decision in Range v. Attorney General, 124 F.4th 218 (3d Cir. 2024), found no historical footing for applying § 922(g)(1) to a man whose only disqualifying offense was a 1995 false statement to obtain food stamps. In United States v. Diaz, 116 F.4th 458 (5th Cir. 2024), the Fifth Circuit ran the same individualized historical analysis but concluded that tradition supported disarming that defendant, whose priors included vehicle theft. And in United States v. Duarte, 137 F.4th 743 (9th Cir. 2025) (en banc), the Ninth Circuit treated felon disarmament as categorically permissible — the approach a majority of circuits now follow. This is among the fastest-moving questions in federal criminal law, and the lineup described here needs re-checking on the day any motion is filed.

The Supreme Court entered this territory in June 2026 — but next door, not in the felon cases. In United States v. Hemani, No. 24-1234 (U.S. 2026), the Court held that the government could not constitutionally prosecute a man under § 922(g)(3) — the bar on possession by an unlawful drug user — based only on his admission that he used marijuana every other day, because the historical \”habitual drunkard\” laws the government offered targeted different people, for different reasons, and through different procedures. The decision is a significant signal that the history-and-tradition test has real teeth against the broadest § 922(g) applications. But the Court was emphatic that it was deciding only the drug-user provision: it expressly declined to address § 922(g)(1) felon disarmament, leaving the circuit split above exactly where it stood. For a felon-in-possession defendant, Hemani is persuasive ammunition on method, not a controlling answer — and it makes preserving the as-applied challenge more important, not less.

An as-applied challenge is motion practice, not a jury argument. It enters the case through a pretrial motion to dismiss the indictment, and it rises or falls on a record the defense assembles deliberately: the elements and age of the disqualifying conviction, its nonviolent character, the client’s history since, and the absence of a historical analogue for disarming someone on those facts. The government responds with founding-era comparators; the dispute is over how close those comparators must be.

Where a circuit currently forecloses the challenge, filing it anyway is not wasted work — it is preservation. A denied motion keeps the issue alive for en banc review, for certiorari, and for any later change in the law, while an argument never made faces plain-error review at best and may be lost entirely under a broad appeal waiver. In our practice, the Second Amendment posture of a § 922(g)(1) charge is a standing checklist item, whatever the local rule.

The Search and the Fourth Amendment

In a felon-in-possession case, the firearm almost always comes from a search — a traffic stop, a pat-down, a vehicle search, or a search of a home. The Fourth Amendment governs every one of them, and the legality of that search is frequently the decisive issue.

A stop without reasonable suspicion, 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 generally ends the prosecution. A rigorous review of every stop and search is a priority from the first day of the defense.

Penalties for Felon in Possession

Felon in possession is a felony carrying a statutory maximum of up to 15 years in federal prison and a fine. Where the Armed Career Criminal Act applies, the penalty becomes a fifteen-year mandatory minimum and a maximum of life — a transformation that makes the ACCA analysis central.

Above any mandatory minimum, the advisory United States Sentencing Guidelines drive the sentence. The type of firearm, the number of firearms, whether the firearm was connected to another offense, and the defendant’s criminal history all influence the range. Supervised release and forfeiture of the firearm also apply. Because felon-in-possession counts are frequently charged alongside drug offenses, the combined exposure can be significant — and where the government ties the firearm to a drug crime, a separate consecutive count under § 924(c) may follow. Contesting the firearms count and the sentencing enhancements is essential.

Defenses to Felon-in-Possession Charges

No two felon-in-possession 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 knowingly possess the firearm, or — under Rehaif — did not know he belonged to the prohibited category.
• ACCA challenges. The prior convictions do not qualify as violent felonies or serious drug offenses, or were not committed on different occasions.
• No interstate commerce nexus. The government cannot establish the required connection to interstate commerce.
• Constitutional challenges. Developing Second Amendment case law has reshaped challenges to some applications of § 922(g).
• Attribution. The government cannot prove the defendant, rather than another person, possessed the firearm.
• Sentencing challenges. Contesting the Guidelines calculations and any enhancements.

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

How Felon-in-Possession Cases Arise

Felon-in-possession cases most often arise from a search — a traffic stop, a pat-down, a search warrant at a home, or a search incident to another arrest. They also arise from drug investigations in which a firearm is found, from straw-purchase and trafficking investigations, and from referrals to federal prosecutors after a state arrest.

The early steps matter. Do not consent to searches of your vehicle, home, or belongings; you are not required to. Decline to give an unprepared interview — particularly any statement about possession or about your prior record. Preserve your rights, and consult an experienced felon in possession lawyer immediately, because the search-and-seizure issues that can decide these cases are best developed from the start.

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

Felon-in-possession cases reward defense lawyers who litigate the Fourth Amendment hard, who understand constructive possession and the Rehaif requirement, and who know how to dismantle an Armed Career Criminal Act enhancement.

Appellate-grade analysis is what a field reshaped by Rehaif, Bruen, and Erlinger rewards, and that is the firm’s core strength: Elizabeth Franklin-Best wrote Reversing Your Criminal Conviction, argues in courts of appeals across the country, and holds admissions to the U.S. Supreme Court and all twelve circuits. Christopher Zoukis, our Managing Director, works the sentencing and Bureau of Prisons side of these cases, where ACCA and Guidelines disputes ultimately land. Standing admissions plus pro hac vice practice let us take a § 922(g) case in any district.

We will not tell you a § 922(g) case is a sure win — nobody honest will. We will tell you, after a real review, exactly where your case is vulnerable and where the government’s is: the stop, the possession proof, the knowledge element, the priors, the constitutional posture. That review starts with a paid, one-hour initial consultation.

Talk With a Felon in Possession Defense Lawyer

A felon-in-possession conviction can mean up to 15 years — and a fifteen-year mandatory floor if the Armed Career Criminal Act attaches. Suppression issues, possession defenses, and constitutional challenges all reward early development, and several of them can be forfeited by delay. Bring the case to a felon in possession lawyer while those doors are open: schedule a paid, one-hour initial consultation with our team today, and see our federal sentencing guide for what determines the number if the case reaches judgment.