Restoring Your Gun Rights in Arizona: How to Get Firearm Rights Back

Caution: Arizona can restore your firearm rights under state law and you can still be a federal felon in possession the moment you touch a gun. Before you buy, hold, or carry any firearm, confirm the federal effect of your specific restoration with a qualified firearms or defense lawyer. Guessing wrong here is a federal felony, not a technicality.

If you have a past conviction in Arizona and want your firearm rights back, the direct answer is: Arizona does offer real paths to restoration — automatic restoration for some first-time felony offenders, a court petition process, a conviction set-aside, and a governor's pardon — but none of them automatically fixes a separate, federal problem. Arizona and the federal government each keep their own lock on your right to possess a firearm, and opening the state lock does not open the federal one. This guide walks through what Arizona actually offers, in what order, and where the two systems diverge.

The two locks: state and federal are separate systems

This is the single most important thing to understand before you do anything else. A felony conviction triggers two independent bars on firearm possession:

• The federal bar under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) makes it a federal crime for anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year in prison to possess a firearm or ammunition, anywhere in the country. A separate federal bar, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9) — the Lautenberg Amendment — applies even to a misdemeanor conviction if it qualifies as a "misdemeanor crime of domestic violence."
• The Arizona bar makes it a separate state crime (a "prohibited possessor" offense under A.R.S. § 13-3101) for a convicted felon whose civil right to possess firearms has not been restored to have a gun in Arizona. Arizona's prohibited-possessor categories track the federal ones fairly closely — felony convictions, certain mental-health adjudications, and people currently serving supervision for a felony or domestic-violence offense — so Arizona's ban is broadly comparable to, not obviously broader than, the federal one for most people. Always confirm your own category, since mental-health and supervision status can change this.

Fixing the Arizona problem — getting a state court to restore your right to possess a firearm — deals with the state prosecution risk. It does not by itself deal with the federal prosecution risk. Under 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(20), federal law will stop treating you as "convicted" for firearms purposes only if the state's relief (expungement, set-aside, pardon, or restoration of civil rights) restores your civil rights and does not expressly keep a firearms restriction in place. Because Arizona's own statutes sometimes restore firearm rights narrowly, or leave certain offenses (dangerous offenses, some serious offenses) carved out, whether a given Arizona restoration order satisfies the federal test is not automatic — it has to be checked, case by case.

It gets worse for one group: if your disqualifying conviction was a federal felony, Arizona's restoration process cannot fix your federal firearms disability at all. The Supreme Court held in Beecham v. United States, 511 U.S. 368 (1994), that only the jurisdiction that convicted you can restore federal firearm rights for a federal conviction — a state court order does nothing for a federal conviction. The federal government does have its own relief process on the books, 18 U.S.C. § 925(c), but Congress has refused to fund ATF to process those applications for decades, so it is not a realistic option today.

How Arizona restores firearm rights

Arizona is unusual among states in offering several distinct mechanisms, and which one applies to you depends on your history:

• Automatic restoration for first-time offenders. Under A.R.S. § 13-907, a person with no prior felony conviction who completes probation or is absolutely discharged from prison, and who has paid any victim restitution ordered, automatically gets civil rights restored — including the right to possess a firearm — with no application required, unless the conviction was for a "dangerous offense" (A.R.S. § 13-704) or a "serious offense" (A.R.S. § 13-706), in which case firearm rights are excluded from this automatic restoration. Important timing caveat: this automatic firearm-rights restoration flows from a 2022 change to the statute and applies to people who completed probation or were discharged after that change took effect. If you finished your sentence years earlier, do not assume your gun rights came back on their own — many older cases still require a court application, and Arizona courts have addressed exactly this timing question. Confirm your status before you rely on it.
• A court petition to restore firearm rights. Anyone who isn't covered by automatic restoration — because of a prior felony, because the automatic restoration didn't include firearms, or simply to get a court order on paper — can file an application under A.R.S. § 13-908 and A.R.S. § 13-910. The petition goes to the sentencing court, the prosecutor is notified, and the judge has discretion to grant or deny it.
• Set-aside (vacating the judgment). Under A.R.S. § 13-905, a person who has completed probation or sentence may ask the sentencing court to set aside the judgment of guilt. If granted, the right to possess a firearm is generally restored as part of the set-aside — except for people convicted of a "serious offense" as defined in § 13-706, for whom the set-aside does not itself restore gun rights, leaving the § 13-910 petition and its extended wait (described below). Set-aside is not available at all for dangerous offenses, offenses requiring sex-offender registration, offenses with a court finding of sexual motivation, or felonies where the victim was under fifteen.
• A petition tied to a mental-health disqualifier. If your prohibited-possessor status comes from a mental-health finding rather than a criminal conviction, A.R.S. § 13-925 provides a separate court petition process, with a hearing and psychological/psychiatric evidence, specifically for that situation.
• A governor's pardon. The Arizona Board of Executive Clemency reviews pardon applications and, if it votes to recommend one, forwards it to the governor for a final decision. A pardon restores many rights of citizenship, but it restores the right to possess a firearm only if the pardon expressly says so — it is not automatic. For a person convicted of a "dangerous offense," a pardon may be the only route available at all, since Arizona's court-petition statute bars dangerous-offense convictions from filing for restoration through the courts.

Waiting periods and eligibility

Timing depends heavily on which mechanism applies and what you were convicted of:

• For a court petition under § 13-910, most felony convictions carry a two-year wait from the date of absolute discharge before you can file.
• For a "serious offense" as defined in § 13-706 (which includes offenses such as first- or second-degree murder, manslaughter, sexual assault, armed robbery, first-degree burglary, kidnapping, arson of an occupied structure, and dangerous crimes against children), the wait extends to ten years from absolute discharge before you can petition under § 13-910.
• Automatic restoration for qualifying first-time offenders has no separate waiting period beyond completing your sentence, probation, or parole and paying any victim restitution.

Exact eligibility depends on how your specific offense is classified under Arizona's sentencing statutes, and classifications and cross-references in these sections do get amended. Confirm the current text of §§ 13-905, 13-907, 13-908, and 13-910 on the Arizona Legislature's website, or with a local criminal defense lawyer, before assuming any number applies to your case.

Steps to restore your gun rights in Arizona

1. Get your record straight first. Confirm the exact statute you were convicted under, the disposition, and your discharge date (from probation, parole, or prison) directly from the court or the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry — not from memory.
2. Check whether you qualify for automatic restoration. If this was your first felony conviction, it wasn't a dangerous or serious offense, and you completed your sentence and paid any restitution after the 2022 statutory change, your firearm rights may already be restored under § 13-907 without you filing anything. If you finished earlier, do not assume this — confirm with the court or a lawyer, because possessing a gun on a wrong assumption is itself a state felony.
3. If not automatic, choose your mechanism. Depending on your history, that's typically a petition under §§ 13-908/13-910 for firearm-rights restoration, an application to set aside the conviction under § 13-905, or — for a dangerous offense — a pardon application to the Board of Executive Clemency.
4. File in the right court. Petitions and set-aside applications generally go to the Arizona superior court in the county that sentenced you (for out-of-state or federal convictions, civil-rights restoration is filed where you now live); the Arizona Courts' Self-Service Center has current forms and instructions. If you have convictions from more than one Arizona county, you generally need to file in each one.
5. Expect notice to the prosecutor and possibly a hearing. The county attorney's office that handled the original case is served with the petition and can respond; the judge decides on the papers or after a hearing, and has real discretion to deny the request.
6. Budget time and check the fee. Processing can take weeks to several months depending on the county's caseload and whether a hearing is required. Some of these filings carry no clerk's fee by statute and others may, so confirm current costs with the clerk of the specific court rather than assuming.
7. Get the order in writing and keep it. Once granted, the court is required to notify Arizona's Department of Public Safety and the state's databases feeding the national background check system, but you should still keep your own certified copy of the order permanently.
8. Before you ever possess a firearm, confirm the federal effect. Have a lawyer review your specific conviction, your specific restoration order, and current federal law together. Do not assume Arizona relief is enough.

Permanent and serious exclusions

Some categories are effectively locked out of Arizona's ordinary restoration paths:

• Dangerous offenses (as defined in A.R.S. § 13-704 — generally offenses involving the discharge, use, or threat of a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument, or the intentional or knowing infliction of serious physical injury) cannot be resolved through the § 13-910 court-petition route at all; a governor's pardon that expressly restores firearm rights is the only listed option.
• Set-aside is unavailable entirely for offenses requiring sex-offender registration, offenses with a judicial finding of sexual motivation, and felonies where the victim was under fifteen.
• Serious offenses under § 13-706 (including murder, manslaughter, sexual assault, armed robbery, kidnapping, first-degree burglary, arson of an occupied structure, and dangerous crimes against children) face the extended ten-year wait before a § 13-910 petition rather than an outright bar, but remain subject to full judicial discretion even after ten years.

Because these categories and their cross-references can change, and because a federal felony conviction cannot be fixed by any Arizona process at all, do not rely on a general description like this one to decide your own case — confirm your specific offense's classification with the Arizona Attorney General's office, the Department of Public Safety, or a local firearms/defense lawyer.

The bottom line

Arizona gives people with a criminal record real, workable ways to get their firearm rights back — automatic restoration for many first-time offenders, court petitions, set-aside, and pardons. But every one of those paths operates on the state side of the line only. Get any restoration in writing. Confirm the federal effect with a lawyer before you buy, hold, or accept a firearm. And never assume that being legal under Arizona law also makes you legal under federal law — the two systems are separate, and the penalty for guessing wrong is a federal firearms felony.

This article is general legal information about Arizona and federal firearms law as of 2026, not legal advice for your situation — confirm current statutes and your own eligibility with a qualified attorney before acting.