Lautenberg amendment gun rights

What Lautenberg amendment gun rights cover

Lautenberg amendment gun rights follow a conviction that meets 18 U.S.C. 921(a)(33). They are not the restraining-order ban in section 922(g)(8), which Rahimi addressed.

Papers to gather for this conviction

The Department's required-documents page, for a person whose disability is section 922(g)(9), asks for the charging document, underlying investigative reports, a document showing the relationship of the victim, the judgment, and proof of when the sentence was completed. If an official source no longer has a paper, the same page describes a sworn statement. Ask the clerk of the convicting court for the judgment and the charging document. Investigative reports may sit with the law enforcement agency that filed the case, not with the clerk.

What to ask an attorney

Ask whether the conviction has the relationship and the force element the definition requires, whether an expungement or pardon expressly restricts firearms, and whether the 10-year presumption in 28 CFR 107.50(b)(2) is still running. Castleman interprets "physical force." It does not grade a particular state statute. That grading is the lawyer's work.

The Lautenberg Amendment is the common name for a 1996 change to the Gun Control Act. It is about a conviction, not about a restraining order, and it is about a misdemeanor that meets a federal definition, not about every case a police report calls domestic. Restoration questions start with that definition. They do not start with a hope that the word misdemeanor means the federal ban cannot apply.

Where the amendment sits in the statute book

On September 30, 1996, Congress enacted Public Law 104-208, the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act of 1997. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms published a temporary rule implementing the firearms pieces. The rule says the new law makes it unlawful for a person convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence to ship, transport, receive, or possess firearms and ammunition, and prohibits sales or other dispositions to such a person. It says the amendments became effective upon enactment. The current codification of the possession ban is 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(9). The transfer restriction is in section 922(d).

The temporary rule also notes that the amendment reaches people who would otherwise have fallen under official-use exceptions, including law enforcement officers. That is a reason the amendment was controversial. It is also a reason not to assume that a badge, a commission, or a government job answers section 922(g)(9). The statute's text is the authority for who is covered. This article does not restate every official-use proviso. A person whose job involves a firearm should read the current section and talk with counsel about the job.

Section 922(g)(8) is the neighboring category. It applies to a person subject to a court order that restrains the person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child, issued after a hearing, with a finding that the person is a credible threat or with an explicit prohibition on the use of physical force. United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024), held that when a court has found that a person poses a credible threat to the physical safety of another, the person may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment. Rahimi is about section 922(g)(8). It is not a holding about a misdemeanor conviction under section 922(g)(9). The two categories can both matter in one household, and they are still two statutes. The court-cases article keeps Rahimi in that lane.

The definition Congress wrote

Section 921(a)(33) defines "misdemeanor crime of domestic violence." The offense must be a misdemeanor under federal, state, or tribal law. It must have, as an element, the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon. The victim must be a current or former spouse, parent, or guardian of the victim, a person with whom the victim shares a child, a person with whom the victim is cohabiting or has cohabited as a spouse, parent, or guardian, or a person similarly situated, as the statute specifies. Those relationship words are the statute's, and they have been litigated. This article does not try to list every relationship a later case has accepted or rejected. The code section is the place to read the list.

The definition also says the person must have been represented by counsel or knowingly and intelligently waived counsel, and, if the person was entitled to a jury, must have had a jury or waived it. Those procedural sentences are part of the definition. A conviction that does not meet them is not, under the statute's own text, a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence for this ban. Whether a particular plea meets them is a question about that plea.

Subsection 921(a)(33)(B) is the restoration clause. A person shall not be considered to have been convicted of such an offense if the conviction has been expunged or set aside, or is an offense for which the person has been pardoned or has had civil rights restored, unless the pardon, expungement, or restoration expressly provides that the person may not ship, transport, possess, or receive firearms. That is the same unless-clause pattern used in section 921(a)(20) for felonies. The expungement article explains why a state's label does not replace this text. A sealed file that the state still treats as a conviction, or an expungement that expressly forbids firearms, does not become a federal restoration because someone calls it one.

What the 2026 relief rule says about this conviction

A person prohibited by section 922(g)(9) may apply under section 925(c). The application is not a shorter form because the offense was a misdemeanor. Section 107.10(g)(8) of the Department's rule lists what that applicant must include: the charging instrument, the underlying investigative reports, a statement of the relationship of the victim to the applicant, the judgment or plea, a certificate of the date the sentence was completed, any record that purports to show the conviction was rendered nugatory or that civil rights were restored even if that procedure was not enough under federal law, and police reports from the original arrest to the present that involve domestic violence and the applicant.

That list is intentionally wide. It asks for reports of later incidents, not only for the conviction that created the disability. It also asks for state relief papers even when those papers may not have removed the federal ban. Sending them lets the Department see the attempt. It does not establish that the attempt worked.

Section 107.50(b)(2) is the presumption. An application will be denied, absent extraordinary circumstances, if within the last 10 years the person was convicted of, or served any part of a sentence for, a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. The section also restarts a 10-year period if, within 10 years after that conviction or sentence, the person incurs another disability under section 922(g), or is arrested for a felony, another misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, or another offense in which the person was alleged to have committed or threatened violence or to have brandished or discharged a firearm or used an explosive. The arrest branch does not apply if the person submits evidence of a judicial determination that no misconduct occurred or of a dismissal on the merits. The preamble to the final rule describes this restart in the same terms.

A 10-year presumption is not a finding that every such conviction is permanently disqualifying, and it is not a finding that year eleven produces a grant. Other parts of section 107.50 can still apply, including a permanent presumption for a felony that involves intimate-partner or domestic violence. The Attorney General still has to be satisfied of the statutory standard in section 925(c). The Department's questions page tells a person denied because of a time-limited presumption to wait until that presumption expires before applying again, and it says a denial for other reasons can add a 5-year presumptive disqualifier under section 107.70.

Force, relationship, and the risk of a shorthand

People shorten this law to "a domestic violence misdemeanor means no guns." The statute is narrower than that shorthand and stricter than a hope that "misdemeanor" means "not serious enough." It is narrower because of the element-of-force requirement and the relationship requirement and the counsel and jury sentences. It is stricter because a state misdemeanor, including one punished by less than a year, can still be the federal offense if the definition is met. Section 922(g)(1)'s "more than one year" line is a different ban. Section 922(g)(9) does not borrow that line.

United States v. Castleman, 572 U.S. 157 (2014), held that the "physical force" required by section 921(a)(33) includes the degree of force that supports a common-law battery conviction, and that the statute applies to a conviction that has the use of physical force as an element even when the state statute can be violated by a slight touching. That is a Supreme Court interpretation of the force element. It is not a holding that every state domestic-violence statute qualifies, because the method of comparing elements still depends on the statute of conviction. Citing Castleman is a reason to read the state statute, not a reason to skip that reading. The opinion is at https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/12-1371 for anyone who wants the Court's words rather than this summary.

What this article will not conclude

It will not say that a particular plea is or is not a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. It will not say that extraordinary circumstances are present because years have passed without a new arrest. It will not say that a 925(c) grant, if one is issued, removes a state prohibition. Section 107.30 says it does not. A person preparing papers can use the document list above. Rights Restore can help organize those papers. The decision stays with the Attorney General, and the advice about a person's own case stays with a lawyer the person chooses. The beta page is the software's offer, not a legal conclusion.