Can a DUI affect my gun permit?
It’s bad enough that you’re facing a DUI charge with potential consequences that include losing your driver’s license, mandatory jail time, fines, probation, and attendance at an alcohol education class. But what about your handgun carry permit?
If you have an existing carry permit you will not lose it for a first offense DUI conviction. However, because you cannot legally possess a handgun while on probation and because eleven months and twenty-nine days of unsupervised probation is a mandatory requirement of a DUI conviction, you may have to make other arrangements for your guns during the probation period.
This, obviously, also impacts a person’s ability to purchase new firearms during the probation period.
Tennessee law does place limitations on applicants applying for a new gun permit who have been convicted of two (2) or more DUI offenses in Tennessee or elsewhere within ten (10) years of each other and if either is within five (5) years of the application, so multiple offense DUI convictions may affect your ability to obtain a carry permit if you do not already have one.
If you are convicted of a felony DUI you will, like other felony convictions, lose your right ever to possess a firearm under state and federal law, and therefore, a carry permit would be suspended or any new application denied.
In short, a DUI conviction can affect your gun permit rights. A Summers, Rufolo & Rodgers attorney can help you understand your options for protecting those rights most effectively.