A guy came into a recent basic pistol class in Boynton Beach, plunked his range bag on the table, and asked me flat out: “If I got a DUI back in 2019, can I even buy a gun?” That’s an easy one — a misdemeanor DUI alone doesn’t disqualify you. But the question behind the question, the one that actually trips people up, is who cannot legally own a gun in the United States, and the honest answer runs longer and stranger than most students expect. Felons are only part of the list, and the rest catches people who’ve never been anywhere near a courtroom.
I get some version of this question almost every session, usually from a new gun owner who’s nervous about a relative’s mental health history, an old drug charge, or a restraining order from a messy divorce. So let’s go through it properly, federal law first, then Florida’s own layer on top of it, then what it actually looks like in Palm Beach County.
The Nine Federal Categories Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)
Federal law does the heavy lifting here. Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), a person is a “prohibited person” — meaning they cannot legally buy, receive, or possess a firearm or ammunition anywhere in the country — if any of nine things apply to them:
They’ve been convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year in prison (this is the felony category, and it’s the biggest one by far). They’re a fugitive from justice. They’re an unlawful user of, or addicted to, a controlled substance. They’ve been adjudicated as mentally defective or committed to a mental institution. They’re in the country illegally, or they’re here on certain nonimmigrant visas. They received a dishonorable discharge from the military. They’ve renounced their U.S. citizenship. They’re subject to a qualifying domestic violence restraining order. Or they have a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction. Nine categories, one federal statute, and it applies the same whether you’re standing in a gun shop in West Palm Beach or one in Wyoming.
The felony category does most of the work in practice. According to the FBI’s 2024 NICS Operational Report, the leading reason for a denial in 2024 was, and has historically been, a conviction under § 922(g)(1) — a crime punishable by more than a year behind bars. That’s not limited to violent crime. Plenty of white-collar and drug felonies carry sentences over a year, which quietly pulls people into this category who never think of themselves as “the kind of person” this law is about.
How Many People Actually Get Denied
In calendar year 2024, the NICS system processed 28,097,205 firearm-related background checks. Of those, 110,505 resulted in a denial, according to the same FBI report. That’s roughly 1.1 percent. It sounds small until you remember it’s still over a hundred thousand people in a single year who tried to buy a gun and were legally stopped at the counter. For comparison, denials were 131,865 in 2022 and 116,587 in 2023, so the number has actually trended down the last couple of years even as gun sales stayed strong. Since the system went live in November 1998, the running total is somewhere north of five million denials.
Most denials never turn into prosecutions. The Department of Justice’s own review of calendar year 2022 found 12,674 denial referrals sent to ATF for further review, and of those, only 76 resulted in a case referred for prosecution, with three convictions by year’s end, per the DOJ’s NICS denial statistics report. Translation: a denial mostly just means you don’t get the gun that day. It rarely means you go to jail for trying.
Florida’s Own Felon Statute Goes a Little Further
Florida doesn’t just borrow the federal felony rule — it has its own version, and it’s arguably broader. Under Florida Statute 790.23, it’s a felony for anyone convicted of a felony (Florida, federal, or out of state) to own, possess, or carry a firearm, ammunition, or an electric weapon. It also sweeps in people found delinquent of an act that would have been a felony if committed as an adult, so long as they’re under 24 — a detail a lot of parents of teenagers don’t know about until it’s already a problem. The exceptions are narrow: your civil rights and firearm authority have to be formally restored, or the underlying offense has to be expunged under section 943.0515(1)(b). You don’t get there by just staying out of trouble for a few years. There’s a process, and skipping it is how people end up catching a brand new felony charge for a mistake they thought was behind them.
None of this is legal advice — if you have a record and you’re not sure where you stand, talk to a Florida criminal defense attorney who handles firearm rights restoration before you touch a gun, not after.
Domestic Violence Injunctions: Florida’s Mandatory Surrender Rule
This is the one that catches people off guard, because it’s civil, not criminal, and it moves fast. Under Florida Statute 790.233, anyone subject to a final injunction for protection against domestic violence, stalking, or cyberstalking cannot have a firearm or ammunition in their care, custody, possession, or control, period. Once that injunction is served, you have to surrender every firearm and every round of ammunition to police, get a receipt, and file that receipt with the court. This isn’t optional and it isn’t up to a judge’s discretion for a final injunction — the surrender is mandatory by statute. Violating it is a first-degree misdemeanor, up to a year in jail and a thousand-dollar fine.
Temporary injunctions are different — a judge can order surrender, but doesn’t have to. It’s the final injunction where the law leaves no wiggle room. I’ve had students come to class not realizing their concealed weapons license gets surrendered right along with the guns. It does.
Florida’s Red Flag Law: Risk Protection Orders
Florida also has its own version of a “red flag” law, created after the 2018 Parkland shooting under what’s officially called a Risk Protection Order, codified at Florida Statute 790.401. Only a law enforcement officer or agency can petition for one — family members can’t file it themselves, though they can push a deputy to do it on their behalf. If a judge grants it, the respondent has to immediately surrender all firearms and ammunition, and they’re barred from buying, possessing, or receiving any for up to a year, with the possibility of a one-year extension after a review hearing.
This law has gotten a real workout in our part of the state. According to the Palm Beach Post’s 2023 analysis of state court records, Palm Beach County judges approved 103 risk protection order petitions in the 2020-21 budget year. By the first ten months of the 2022-23 budget year, that number had jumped to 325 — the second-highest total of any county in Florida. A separate tally reported by the Miami Herald put Palm Beach County at 1,013 total petitions from July 2022 through the most recent count, compared to 572 in Broward and 317 in Miami-Dade. Sheriff Ric Bradshaw has said publicly that the law is working. Whatever your politics on red flag laws generally, the numbers tell you it’s not a rarely-used tool here — it’s an active, growing part of how firearms get removed from people the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office believes are a danger to themselves or others.
If a risk protection order is issued against you in Palm Beach County, you surrender directly to PBSO, not to a random property room somewhere. And yes, your concealed weapons license goes with it.
The Under-21 Enhanced Background Check Wrinkle
Since October 2022, buyers under 21 go through an enhanced NICS check under the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which pulls in juvenile and mental health records that wouldn’t normally show up. As of late February 2024, the FBI reported roughly 228,000 of these enhanced checks completed, with about 2,200 denials — split between denials based on straightforward criminal history and denials that came specifically from the expanded BSCA outreach, according to the FBI’s own reporting. If you’ve got a young adult in the house who’s about to buy their first gun, this is worth knowing before they get to the counter, not after they’re standing there confused about a hold.
Mental Health Adjudication Isn’t What Most People Assume
“Adjudicated mental defective” is ugly, outdated legal language, but the category it describes is specific — it means a court, board, or other legal authority has formally determined someone is a danger to themselves or others, or lacks the capacity to manage their own affairs, due to a mental condition. It also covers involuntary commitment to a mental institution. A voluntary counseling appointment doesn’t trigger it. Being on antidepressants doesn’t trigger it. A single ER visit for a panic attack doesn’t trigger it. It takes a formal legal proceeding, and that distinction matters a lot, because I’ve had more than one nervous new shooter ask if seeing a therapist will show up on their background check. It won’t, unless it escalated all the way to a court adjudication or involuntary commitment.
What Actually Happens at the Counter
Every retail firearm purchase in Florida runs through the same federal Form 4473 and the same NICS check, whether you’re at a big-box store in Wellington or a small shop in Stuart. The dealer submits your information, NICS checks it against the federal categories above plus Florida’s state-level disqualifiers, and you get a proceed, a delay, or a denial, usually within minutes. A delay isn’t a denial — it just means the system needs more time, up to three business days by default, before a dealer can use what’s called a default proceed. A denial means one of these categories applied, and you have the right to request the specific reason and appeal it if you think it’s wrong. People do get denied by mistake — mismatched names and old, cleared records happen — and the appeal process exists precisely because of that.
My Actual Take
Most of what I’ve laid out here isn’t controversial once you separate it from politics. A felon shouldn’t have a gun. Someone under an active domestic violence injunction shouldn’t have one either, and Florida is right to make that mandatory rather than discretionary. Where I think the system genuinely fails people is on the back end — the restoration process for someone whose felony is fifteen years old, who’s held a job and stayed clean, is slow and confusing enough that a lot of people just give up and never legally own a gun again even when they’d qualify for restoration. If you’re in that spot, don’t guess. Get a lawyer who does firearm rights restoration specifically, not a general practice attorney doing you a favor.
If you’ve got a question about your own eligibility, or you inherited a firearm and aren’t sure if you’re legally allowed to keep it given something in your past, don’t call a gun store and don’t post about it on Facebook. Call an attorney, or call me and I’ll point you to one who handles restorations. I’m at (561) 213-2974 or Mike@suburbanprotector.com, and if it’s a straightforward safety or training question, I’m happy to just answer it directly.