Firearm Violations

Immediate stakes

Firearm Violation Defense Attorney in Los Angeles

Most firearm cases in Los Angeles County start the same way. A traffic stop that should have ended with a citation turns into a search of a car, a backpack, or a bedroom. What turns up is often a gun that was legally purchased, or that belonged to someone else, or that had been sitting in a glove compartment for months without anyone thinking about it.

Then it becomes a criminal case, and the numbers get serious fast.

California regulates firearms more heavily than almost any other state, and the charges reflect that. Conduct that would be a paperwork problem in Arizona is a wobbler here, which means a prosecutor gets to decide whether you're facing a misdemeanor or a felony. That decision, made by someone who has never met you, will follow you for the rest of your life if nobody pushes back on it.

Common charges

The Firearm Charges We See Most Often in Los Angeles County

Carrying a Concealed Firearm (Penal Code 25400)

It is a crime to carry a concealed firearm capable of being hidden on your person, either on your body or inside a vehicle you control, without a license. Prosecutors have to prove the firearm was substantially concealed and that you knew it was there.

As a misdemeanor, a conviction carries up to one year in county jail and a fine of up to $1,000.

It becomes a wobbler, meaning the prosecutor can file it as a felony, if either of two things is true. The first is a prior conviction for a misdemeanor against a person or property, or for a narcotics or dangerous drug offense. The second is that the firearm was loaded, or ammunition was readily accessible, and you're not listed with the California Department of Justice as the registered owner. That second trigger catches a lot of people who did nothing more aggressive than borrow a family member's gun.

As a felony, the exposure is 16 months, two years, or three years, and a fine of up to $10,000. If you have a prior felony conviction or a prior firearm offense, a conviction carries a minimum of three months in custody.

Carrying a Loaded Firearm in Public (Penal Code 25850)

This is a separate charge from concealed carry, and the two are frequently filed together. It applies to carrying a loaded firearm on your person or in a vehicle while in a public place or on a public street. A first offense with no aggravating factors is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in county jail and a $1,000 fine. With a prior firearm or narcotics conviction, or where you're a prohibited person, it becomes a felony carrying 16 months, two years, or three years. One detail worth knowing: the statute expressly allows an officer to inspect a firearm to determine whether it's loaded. That inspection is often the moment a misdemeanor becomes a felony.

Possession of a Firearm by a Prohibited Person (Penal Code 29800, 29805, 29820)

Penal Code 29800 makes it a felony for anyone with a prior felony conviction to own, purchase, receive, or possess a firearm. The prosecution must prove you knowingly possessed it and that you had the qualifying prior. It does not have to prove you carried it, concealed it, loaded it, or intended to use it. The exposure is 16 months, two years, or three years. Penal Code 29805 imposes a ten-year firearm ban after certain misdemeanor convictions, including domestic violence under Penal Code 273.5, criminal threats under Penal Code 422, stalking under Penal Code 646.9, assault with a deadly weapon, and brandishing. Possessing a firearm inside that ten-year window is a wobbler. Penal Code 29820 bars people adjudicated as juveniles for certain offenses from possessing firearms until age 30. People are routinely surprised by this one, because a juvenile matter doesn't feel like a conviction and nobody explained the consequence at the time.

Possession of Ammunition by a Prohibited Person (Penal Code 30305)

If you're barred from possessing a firearm, you're also barred from possessing ammunition. This is a wobbler, punishable as a misdemeanor by up to one year in county jail, or as a felony by 16 months, two years, or three years. It's charged constantly as an add-on, sometimes when no firearm was ever found. A single box of shells in a closet is enough.

Brandishing, Negligent Discharge, and Shooting at a Dwelling or Vehicle

Penal Code 417 covers brandishing, meaning drawing or exhibiting a firearm in a rude, angry, or threatening way, or using one in a fight. Where a firearm is involved, a conviction carries a mandatory minimum of three months in county jail, and the charge can be filed as a felony in some circumstances, including where the person brandished at is a peace officer. Penal Code 246.3 covers willfully discharging a firearm in a grossly negligent way that could result in injury or death. It's a wobbler, carrying up to one year as a misdemeanor or 16 months, two years, or three years as a felony. Penal Code 246 covers shooting at an inhabited dwelling, an occupied building, or an occupied vehicle. This is the most serious charge in this group, carrying three, five, or seven years.

Assault with a Firearm (Penal Code 245(a)(2))

Assault with a firearm is a wobbler. As a misdemeanor it carries a minimum of six months and up to one year in county jail. As a felony it carries two, three, or four years, and a felony conviction is a strike under California's Three Strikes law. Note what the prosecution does not have to prove: that anyone was hit, that the gun was fired, or that anyone was injured.

Charging decision

Why "Wobbler" Is the Most Important Word in Your Case

Most of the charges above can be filed either way. That single decision determines almost everything else about your life afterward.

A misdemeanor conviction usually means county jail or probation. A felony conviction means potential prison, and it means a lifetime prohibition on possessing a firearm in California. It affects employment, professional licensing, housing applications, and, for anyone who's not a United States citizen, immigration status.

Penal Code 17(b) gives courts the authority to reduce a wobbler felony to a misdemeanor, either at sentencing or afterward. That reduction is not automatic and nobody offers it to you. It has to be asked for, argued, and supported with the kind of record that gives a judge a reason to grant it. A significant amount of the work in a firearm case happens right here, and it happens whether or not the case ever goes to trial.

Sentencing exposure

When the Gun Adds Years to a Different Charge

Some of the worst firearm exposure in California is not a firearm charge at all. It is an enhancement bolted onto a different felony.

Penal Code 12022

Penal Code 12022 adds a consecutive year for being armed with a firearm during the commission of a felony. You don't have to use it or even touch it during the offense.

Personally using a firearm adds up to ten years (Penal Code 12022.5)

Penal Code 12022.5 adds three, four, or ten years for personally using a firearm during a felony.

The "10-20-life" law can add 25 years to life (Penal Code 12022.53)

Penal Code 12022.53, known as the "10-20-life" law, applies to a list of specified serious felonies including robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, and murder. It adds ten years for personally using a firearm, twenty years for intentionally discharging one, and 25 years to life where the discharge causes great bodily injury or death. The statute expressly provides that the firearm does not need to be loaded or even operable.

A judge can strike these enhancements.

These enhancements stack onto the underlying sentence, and for years they were mandatory. That changed. Senate Bill 620, effective January 1, 2018, gave judges discretion to strike firearm enhancements in the interest of justice under Penal Code 1385, and Senate Bill 81 expanded what courts are required to consider when deciding. That discretion is the single most valuable thing a defense attorney can work with in a serious firearm case. It's exercised on the strength of a mitigation record: who you are, what your role actually was, what your history looks like, and what the sentence would mean for the people who depend on you. Building that record takes months, and it's not something that gets assembled the week before sentencing.

Changing law

California Gun Law Is Changing While Your Case Is Pending

California's firearm statutes are in an unusual period. A number of provisions are being actively litigated in federal court, some have been enjoined and then reinstated, and appellate decisions are changing how certain restrictions are enforced.

This matters to you in a practical way. The law that applies to your case is generally the law as it stood when the alleged conduct occurred, but a decision issued while your case is pending can affect how a charge is prosecuted, what enhancements survive, and what leverage exists in negotiation. It also means that a page like this one, or advice you got from someone eighteen months ago, may not reflect where things currently stand.

We track these developments because they change outcomes. If some part of your case touches an area that is currently in flux, that's a conversation to have early rather than after a plea.

Evidence and suppression

How a Firearm Case Gets Built, and Where It Breaks

Almost every firearm case in Los Angeles begins with a search. Someone was pulled over, or stopped on the street, or their home was entered. The gun was found. Everything after that is downstream of that moment.

This is why the first question in a firearm case is not whether the gun was yours. It is whether the government was allowed to find it.

Was the stop lawful?

An officer needs reasonable suspicion to detain you. A hunch, a neighborhood, or a vehicle description that only loosely matches is not enough, and pretextual stops that stretch a minor equipment violation into a fishing expedition are challengeable.

Was the search lawful?

Searching a car requires probable cause, a valid exception, or consent. Consent has to be voluntary, and what officers characterize in a report as consent is frequently something closer to compliance with a command. Searching a home generally requires a warrant, and warrants can be attacked on the sufficiency of the affidavit behind them.

Was the detention prolonged beyond its purpose?

A traffic stop cannot be extended to wait for a dog, a backup unit, or a records check unrelated to the reason for the stop.

The suppression motion

Penal Code 1538.5 is the mechanism for raising these issues. It's a motion to suppress, and in a possession case it's often dispositive, because if the firearm is suppressed there's frequently nothing left to prosecute.

Possession and knowledge

The second line of attack is the possession element itself. Possession does not require the gun to be in your hand, but it does require knowledge and control. In shared cars and shared apartments, those elements get thin quickly. A firearm found in a vehicle with three people in it belongs to somebody, and the prosecution has to prove which one. A gun in a closet in an apartment where four people live is not automatically anyone's. Knowledge matters too. Someone who borrows a car, or inherits a relative's belongings, or is handed a bag, may genuinely not know what's in it.

Defense strategy

How We Defend Firearm Charges

Knarik Boyadzhyan is a former Deputy Public Defender in Los Angeles County who represented clients facing criminal charges at every stage. Before serving as a Deputy Public Defender, she worked as a paralegal in the U.S. Department of Justice's Violent and Organized Crime Section, which is useful context in a county where some firearm cases are picked up by federal prosecutors rather than the District Attorney. She appears regularly in the Van Nuys and Glendale courthouses and throughout Los Angeles County.

Here is what our work on a firearm case looks like.

We get into the search before anything else.

Body-worn camera footage, dash camera footage, radio traffic, and the incident report don't always tell the same story, and the differences between them are where suppression motions come from. This material has retention limits. Requesting it early is not a formality.

We push on the filing decision itself.

Where charges haven't been filed yet, there is a window to give the District Attorney's office information they don't have: registration records, ownership documents, the actual relationship between our client and the firearm. Filing decisions are made on a police report, and police reports are one-sided by design.

We fight the wobbler.

Getting a case filed as a misdemeanor instead of a felony, or reduced to one later under Penal Code 17(b), often matters more to a client's life than the difference in custody time. We treat that as a primary objective, not a consolation prize.

We attack enhancements separately from charges.

A firearm enhancement is a distinct fight with distinct evidence, and since SB 620 it's a fight that can be won even where the underlying charge cannot.

We build the mitigation record from day one.

Employment history, family circumstances, treatment, service, and the actual context of what happened. Judges exercise discretion on the strength of that record, and it can't be assembled at the last minute.

Long-term consequences

What a Conviction Costs After the Sentence Ends

Your firearm rights.

A felony conviction in California means a lifetime prohibition. A qualifying misdemeanor under Penal Code 29805 means ten years. Penal Code 29810 requires people convicted of prohibiting offenses to relinquish firearms they own, on a schedule the court sets.

Your immigration status.

Firearm convictions are a specific category of concern under federal immigration law, separate from and in addition to any general concern about a criminal conviction. If you're not a United States citizen, this needs to be part of the strategy from the first conversation, not something addressed after a plea is entered.

Your professional license.

State licensing boards ask, and a firearm conviction reads differently to a board than most other offenses.

Expungement does not restore firearm rights after a felony.

There's one point of confusion worth clearing up, because it costs people. Dismissal under Penal Code 1203.4, what most people call expungement, does not restore firearm rights after a felony. Reducing a wobbler felony to a misdemeanor under Penal Code 17(b) is a different mechanism with different effects. If restoring your rights matters to you, the decisions that determine whether that's possible are made during your case, not years later.

Immediate steps

What to Do Right Now

Do not talk to the police about the firearm.

Not about who owns it, how long it has been there, or why it was in the car. Explanations that feel exculpatory are, in a possession case, usually admissions.

Do not consent to any further search.

If they ask, you may decline, and declining is not evidence of anything.

Gather your documentation.

Purchase records, DROS paperwork, registration, storage receipts, anything showing lawful acquisition or lawful ownership by someone else.

Say nothing on a recorded jail line.

Calls from custody are recorded and prosecutors listen to them.

Call before charges are filed if you can.

The window between arrest and filing is short and it's the most useful window in the entire case.

Frequently Asked Questions

Questions About Firearm Charges

If your question is not answered here, call (310) 877-7770 to discuss your situation.

Yes. Legal purchase and legal carry are different questions in California. Most of the charges above concern how, where, and by whom a firearm was carried or possessed, not whether it was lawfully bought. Being the registered owner is legally significant in some charges, particularly under Penal Code 25400, so bring your documentation to your first meeting.

It can be a complete defense, but it is not automatic. The prosecution has to prove you knowingly had control over the firearm, which is different from proving you owned it. In shared vehicles and shared residences, that element is frequently where these cases are won, and it's worth developing carefully rather than just asserting.

Not necessarily. Many first-offense charges under Penal Code 25400 and 25850 are filed as misdemeanors, and county jail or probation is a common outcome. The exposure changes substantially where there's a prior record, where the person is prohibited from possession, or where an enhancement is attached to another felony.

It depends on what you were convicted of. A felony conviction in California carries a lifetime ban, and expungement under Penal Code 1203.4 does not lift it. Reducing a wobbler felony to a misdemeanor under Penal Code 17(b) can change the analysis. This is worth asking about while your case is still open, because the choices made now determine what is possible later.

It can. Federal prosecutors sometimes take firearm cases, particularly where there's a prior felony record or facts that cross state lines. Federal exposure and federal procedure are different from state court, and if there's any indication of federal interest in your case, that changes strategy immediately.

Knarik Boyadzhyan speaking on the phone in the firm's Encino office.

Consultation

Talk to Knarik Boyadzhyan About Your Firearm Charge

Boyadzhyan Legal Shield defends firearm cases throughout Los Angeles County from our office in Encino. Whether you have been arrested, released pending filing, or contacted by detectives about a firearm, we can talk through where things stand and what the realistic paths look like. Consultations are free and confidential. If your case hasn't been filed yet, the sooner we talk, the more there is to work with.

Request Consultation Call (310) 877-7770

This page is general legal information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. California statute references link to the official California Legislative Information site.