Arkansas Act 346 and Gun Rights: Probation, Completion, and Federal Law

Under Arkansas’s First Offender Act, commonly called Act 346, your gun rights depend entirely on where you are in the process. While you are on first-offender probation, you cannot legally possess a firearm. Once you finish probation successfully and the court dismisses and seals the case, Arkansas law treats you as if you had never been convicted of a felony for firearms purposes, and federal law follows the same result. If probation is revoked and the court enters a conviction, that protection disappears.

No Firearms While You Are on Probation

This is where people get it wrong most often. Act 346 lets a first-time felony defendant plead guilty or nolo contendere without the court entering a finding of guilt, and places the defendant on probation for at least one year with the case dismissed at the end if everything goes well. But the statute is explicit that during the probation period, the plea counts as a felony conviction for the purpose of any law prohibiting firearm possession.¹²

In practical terms, if you are on Act 346 probation and you possess a firearm, you have both committed a felon-in-possession offense and given the court grounds to revoke your probation. Revocation would then expose you to the original felony conviction you were trying to avoid. The “no conviction” status that Act 346 offers is reserved for the end of the road; it does not apply along the way.

Gun Rights After Successful Completion Under Arkansas Law

Once probation ends successfully, the court discharges the defendant without an adjudication of guilt, dismisses the case, and seals the record under the Comprehensive Criminal Record Sealing Act of 2013.¹ At that point the gun-rights picture changes.

Arkansas’s felon-in-possession statute, Ark. Code Ann. § 5-73-103, generally bars anyone found guilty of a felony from owning or possessing a firearm. Subsection (b)(2) carves out an explicit exception: the prohibition “does not apply to a person whose case was dismissed and expunged under § 16-93-301 et seq.”³ That cross-reference points directly at the First Offender Act. The exception was added by Act 1491 of 2009.⁴

Arkansas Legal Aid states the result bluntly: “if you were sentenced under Act 346, you do not lose your gun rights.”⁵ This matters because ordinary record sealing in Arkansas does not restore firearm rights. The sealing statute itself says it “does not reconfer the right to carry a firearm if that right was removed as the result of a felony conviction.”⁶ Act 346 works where ordinary sealing fails because the firearm exception is written into the felon-in-possession statute itself.

How Federal Law Treats a Completed Act 346 Case

State law restoring your rights is only half the question. Federal law, under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), independently prohibits anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year of imprisonment from possessing a firearm. So the next question is whether a dismissed, sealed Act 346 case counts as a “conviction” under federal law.

Under 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(20), what counts as a conviction is determined by the law of the state where the proceedings occurred. A conviction that has been “expunged, or set aside or for which a person has been pardoned or has had civil rights restored” is not a conviction for federal purposes, unless the expungement or restoration expressly prohibits firearm possession.⁷

A completed Act 346 case clears this bar from two directions. The court never enters a judgment of guilt in the first place, so under Arkansas law there is no conviction to begin with. The Supreme Court confirmed in Beecham v. United States (1994) that the question of what counts as a conviction under § 922(g) is answered by state law, and federal courts have recognized that where a state court withholds adjudication, imposes probation, and then terminates proceedings without ever adjudicating guilt, the defendant does not have a “conviction” under § 921(a)(20).⁸ Even if the case were treated as a conviction later set aside, the § 921(a)(20) exception would apply, because Arkansas affirmatively allows firearm possession after Act 346 completion rather than restricting it.

Giffords Law Center notes a general caveat worth keeping in mind: when Arkansas restores rights through certain gubernatorial processes, “federal law may still prohibit the person from possessing firearms.”² That caveat has less bite for Act 346 completions because the case is dismissed outright, not merely pardoned.

What Happens If Probation Is Revoked

Everything above assumes you finish probation. If the court revokes it, the judge may enter a formal adjudication of guilt and sentence you on the original offense.¹ Now you have a standard felony conviction, and you are subject to both the state felon-in-possession statute and the federal § 922(g) prohibition.

The § 5-73-103(b)(2) exception only applies to cases that were “dismissed and expunged” under the First Offender Act, so a revoked case does not qualify.³ After revocation, restoring gun rights requires one of the other pathways Arkansas offers to convicted felons, such as a gubernatorial pardon that expressly restores firearm rights or administrative relief from the governor under § 5-73-103(d) if the felony is at least eight years old, did not involve a weapon, and the chief local law enforcement officer recommends restoration.⁹

Who Cannot Use Act 346 at All

Act 346 is not available for every first felony. The statute bars individuals who have been found guilty of or pleaded to offenses requiring sex-offender registration, public sexual indecency, indecent exposure, bestiality, knowingly exposing someone to HIV, or any serious felony or felony involving violence as defined in Ark. Code Ann. § 5-4-501.¹ The prosecutor must also agree, and the court has discretion to decline to use the first-offender procedure.¹⁰ If any of these exclusions apply, the firearm restoration benefit of Act 346 is not on the table.

What a Sealed Record Still Shows

Even after a successful Act 346 completion restores your gun rights, “sealed” is not the same as “erased.” Sealed records are kept confidential rather than destroyed. They remain accessible to law enforcement, prosecutors, courts in later proceedings, and the Arkansas Crime Information Center. Certain employers, including law enforcement agencies, day care facilities, nursing homes, and educational institutions, can also see sealed records in background checks.¹¹

For most purposes, though, the Comprehensive Criminal Record Sealing Act treats the underlying conduct “as a matter of law never to have occurred,” and the person may legally state that no such conduct occurred and that no such records exist.⁶ If a sealed Act 346 case ever shows up on a commercial background check that triggers a firearm purchase denial, you can provide the sealing order to the background check company, which must then correct its records under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.¹¹

The sealed record can still be used in a few specific legal contexts: habitual offender determinations, criminal history calculations at sentencing in a future case, and impeachment of you as a witness under the Arkansas Rules of Evidence.¹ None of these touches your right to possess a firearm, but it is worth knowing the case has not disappeared from every system.

1
Justia Law. Arkansas Code § 16-93-303
2
Giffords Law Center. Firearm Prohibitions in Arkansas
3
Justia Law. Arkansas Code § 5-73-103
4
Arkansas General Assembly. Act 1491 of 2009
5
Arkansas Legal Aid. FAQs and Questions – Criminal Record Sealing
6
Justia Law. Arkansas Code § 16-90-1417
7
U.S. Code. 18 U.S.C. § 921
8
Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. Deferred Adjudication and Federal Gun Rights
9
Collateral Consequences Resource Center. Arkansas Restoration of Rights, Pardon, Expungement, Sealing
10
Saline County Government. First Offender Felony Probation
11
Arkansas Legal Aid. Criminal Record Sealing