San Diego Unlawful Discharge of Firearm Lawyer

California Three Strikes Law

California also has a “Three Strikes” law where a felony negligent discharge is considered a ‘serious felony.’ This means that if you were convicted of this crime, a subsequent charge with any other felony in California will result in twice the normal sentence.

Furthermore, if you reach three strikes with another felony conviction—whether or not it is for a negligent discharge offense again—you will have to face a sentence of 25 years to life in a state prison.

Immigration Consequences

If convicted of negligently discharging a firearm in California, non-U.S. citizens will face serious immigration consequences. This offense is considered a “deportable crime.” You can be deported if you’re an immigrant and convicted of or plead guilty to this offense.

Remember that each case can result in varying penalties. Discuss your case with our defense attorneys for a better idea of how it may end up. We’ve handled numerous San Diego unlawful discharge of firearm cases over the years and have well-understood how the local justice system works.

Effective Defenses for Unlawful Discharge of Firearm Cases

Even with similar charges, the circumstances in every case are unique. This is why at Lee Law Group DUI & Criminal Attorneys, we also ensure that we’ve strategically personalized our defense strategy for every client accused of unlawfully discharging a firearm.

We will begin our work by gathering all the relevant facts about your case for a thorough assessment. Once we have all the information we need, we will present all the possible defensive actions we can take. We’ll also explain the potential resolutions to your case so you can decide what course of action you want to pursue.

Here are some of the defenses that we can use for unlawful discharge of firearm cases:

You discharge your firearm in self-defense.

If you were defending yourself or someone else when you shot your firearm, you wouldn’t be guilty of unlawful or negligent discharge.

This defense can be applied if:

• You have reason to believe that you (or someone else) were in imminent danger of getting injured or touched unlawfully.
• You reasonably believed that firing the gun to defend yourself (or someone else) was necessary against that danger.
• The force you used was no more than what was reasonably necessary to defend yourself or someone else.

You believed the gun was unloaded.

Having the genuine belief that the gun was not loaded, you wouldn’t be guilty of negligently discharging a firearm in California. Proving otherwise will be the prosecutors’ burden, and it can be quite difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you knew the firearm was loaded.