PEOPLE v. BALL (2026)

Penal Code section 417.3 makes it a felony to brandish a firearm in a threatening manner in the presence of a motor vehicle occupant “in such a way as to cause a reasonable person apprehension or fear of bodily harm.” Does this brandishing offense require proof of both objective and subjective apprehension or fear? We conclude the statute requires only objective fear — i.e., that the brandishing would cause a reasonable person apprehension or fear, regardless of whether a particular victim actually experienced such fear. We therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeal.

I. Background

Around 6:00 p.m. on January 11, 2020, an off-duty peace officer observed defendant Jacob Frederick Ball in a black Dodge Charger speeding, tailgating, and cutting off other drivers on Oso Parkway in Mission Viejo. After the off-duty officer photographed Ball's vehicle and license plate, Ball pulled up beside the officer at a stoplight and pointed a Glock in the officer's direction before exiting onto the freeway. The off-duty officer called 911 to report the incident. An Orange County sheriff's investigator later contacted Ball, found a loaded Glock in the Charger, and verified that the Charger and the Glock were both registered to Ball. Following a preliminary hearing, Ball was held to answer on two misdemeanors and a felony charge of drawing or exhibiting a firearm in a threatening manner in the presence of a motor vehicle occupant (Pen. Code, § 417.3; all further unspecified references are to this code). The trial court subsequently granted Ball's motion to dismiss the felony charge, reasoning that section 417.3 required the motor vehicle occupant “to be in fear,” yet no such evidence had been introduced.

The Court of Appeal reversed and reinstated the charge of drawing or exhibiting a weapon in a threatening manner. (People v. Ball (2025) 114 Cal.App.5th 181, 186, 336 Cal.Rptr.3d 516.) It held that section 417.3 “sets forth an objective test about causing fear and does not require a victim to subjectively experience it.” (Ball, at p. 183, 336 Cal.Rptr.3d 516.) We granted review to determine whether section 417.3 “require[s] proof of both objective and subjective fear, or is proof of objective fear alone sufficient?”

II. Discussion

To determine whether the offense of brandishing a firearm in the presence of a motor vehicle occupant requires a showing that a victim subjectively experienced fear, we begin with the text of the statute, which “typically is the best and most reliable indicator of the Legislature's intended purpose.” (See Larkin v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd. (2015) 62 Cal.4th 152, 157, 194 Cal.Rptr.3d 80, 358 P.3d 552.) Section 417.3 provides: “Every person who, except in self-defense, in the presence of any other person who is an occupant of a motor vehicle proceeding on a public street or highway, draws or exhibits any firearm, whether loaded or unloaded, in a threatening manner against another person in such a way as to cause a reasonable person apprehension or fear of bodily harm is guilty of a felony․” As Ball concedes, the text of the statute does not explicitly require proof that the victim subjectively experienced fear. It instead articulates an objective standard: proof that the “way” the firearm was drawn or exhibited would “cause a reasonable person apprehension or fear of bodily harm.” (Ibid., italics added.)

When the Legislature wants to impose the additional element of subjective fear, it knows how to do so. The criminal threats statute, for example, requires proof that the threat convey “a gravity of purpose and an immediate prospect of execution of the threat” as to “thereby cause[ ] that person reasonably to be in sustained fear.” (§ 422, subd. (a), italics added.) The prosecution must therefore establish both “that the threat actually caused the person threatened ‘to be in sustained fear for his or her own safety or for his or her immediate family's safety’ ” and “that the threatened person's fear was ‘reasonabl[e]’ under the circumstances.” (People v. Toledo (2001) 26 Cal.4th 221, 228, 109 Cal.Rptr.2d 315, 26 P.3d 1051.) The text of section 417.3, by contrast, does not require a showing that the brandishing actually caused a person to experience apprehension or fear.

We further note that the statute uses “person” to refer to the actual “person” who was “an occupant of a motor vehicle” or who was subjected to the brandishing done “in a threatening manner.” (§ 417.3.) In specifying the effect of the brandishing, however, section 417.3 shifts gears and speaks in terms of a hypothetical “reasonable person.” (See Black's Law Dict. (12th ed. 2024) p. 1521, col. 1 [defining “reasonable person” as “[a] hypothetical person used as a legal standard”].)

Ball contends that the language of the statute can nonetheless be construed to require that a victim subjectively experienced fear. In the absence of such an element, he warns, the requirement that the brandishing must be made “against another person in such a way as to cause a reasonable person apprehension or fear” (§ 417.3, italics added) would be read out of the statute. That is, according to Ball, the italicized language “expressly ties the defendant's conduct to a specific, perceiving individual” and thus “presupposes that a real person is the object of the threatening conduct, not a hypothetical reasonable person.”

We agree that the statute ties the brandishing conduct “to a specific, perceiving individual.” But, as stated above, the statute ties the effect of that conduct to a hypothetical reasonable person. In this case, for example, a real person — an off-duty peace officer in a different vehicle — was the object of Ball's threatening conduct, and he actually perceived Ball's brandishing of the firearm. The applicability of the statute does not turn on whether the off-duty officer himself experienced fear, but on whether “ ‘a reasonable person in a similar situation and with similar knowledge’ ” would have experienced fear. (People v. Humphrey (1996) 13 Cal.4th 1073, 1081, 56 Cal.Rptr.2d 142, 921 P.2d 1.)

Even assuming section 417.3 were somehow susceptible to Ball's proposed reading, he offers no convincing argument for preferring his construction over the statute's natural reading. In particular, his contention that omitting a subjective-fear element would lead to “ ‘absurd’ ” or “ ‘capricious results unintended by the Legislature’ ” (or, at a minimum, “would not promote the Legislature's purpose”) rests on a mischaracterization of section 417.3’s intended purpose.

Ball's articulation of section 417.3’s purpose rests on the following chain of reasoning: “(1) brandishing a firearm in a threatening manner could cause a motorist fear; (2) that fear could cause the motorist to engage in erratic driving; and (3) that erratic driving could result in a public danger. If the motorist does not experience fear, however, the causal chain is broken and the danger the Legislature sought to prevent cannot occur.” His articulation of the statute's purpose, however, is incomplete. Certainly, as Ball claims, brandishing a firearm in a threatening manner at a motor vehicle occupant could trigger fear and thereby cause erratic driving. (Sen. Com. on Judiciary, Analysis of Assem. Bill No. 2625 (1987–1988 Reg. Sess.) as amended Aug. 20, 1987, p. 3.) But brandishing a firearm could instead trigger anger or outrage, either of which could likewise cause erratic driving. Moreover, the brandishing of a firearm increases the likelihood that a firearm will end up being discharged, whether by the original brandisher or by an armed victim or bystander — and these shootings, too, were an impetus for the enactment of section 417.3. (Sen. Com. on Judiciary, Analysis of Assem. Bill No. 2625, supra, p. 2 [noting that “four people have been killed and 19 have been injured by these senseless attacks” in the preceding two months]; see Legis. Analyst, Analysis of Assem. Bill No. 2625 (1987–1988 Reg. Sess.) Aug. 31, 1987, p. 1 [describing the bill as “dealing with the prevention of freeway shootings”].) To limit the offense only to those situations in which a victim subjectively experienced fear would thus exclude a substantial proportion of the dangerous situations the Legislature sought to address. (See generally People v. Simons (1996) 42 Cal.App.4th 1100, 1109, 50 Cal.Rptr.2d 351 [“The chief evil to be avoided by criminalizing exhibition of weapons is the potential for further violence, not only by the defendant, but also by others in response to the defendant's action”].)

Ball also relies on stray language in two Court of Appeal cases, one construing section 417.3 (see People v. Lara (1996) 43 Cal.App.4th 1560, 1566, 51 Cal.Rptr.2d 349 (Lara) [“the person who is placed in fear by the brandishing [must] actually be the occupant of the vehicle”]), and one construing section 417.4, which criminalizes the brandishing of an imitation firearm (see In re Michael D. (2002) 100 Cal.App.4th 115, 124, 121 Cal.Rptr.2d 909 (Michael D.) [brandishing an imitation firearm requires “some person's knowledge of, and a reaction to, the perpetrator's action”]). But neither case examined whether the brandishing statute at issue required proof of both objective and subjective fear. Nor did these cases consider whether imposing a subjective-fear element was consistent with the underlying statutory purpose. (See, e.g., Lara, at p. 1566, fn. 3, 51 Cal.Rptr.2d 349.)

The issue in Lara, for example, was whether the brandishing victim under section 417.3 must be “the occupant of a motor vehicle” or could instead be “anyone,” so long as “the brandishing occurred in the ‘presence’ of an occupied motor vehicle.” (Lara, supra, 43 Cal.App.4th at p. 1565, 51 Cal.Rptr.2d 349.) The court favored the former interpretation, but it had no occasion to consider whether a conviction could be sustained when a reasonable motor vehicle occupant in the victim's position would have experienced apprehension or fear. (See also People v. Howard (2002) 100 Cal.App.4th 94, 99, 121 Cal.Rptr.2d 892 [“Since neither Howard nor the Attorney General questions Lara’s interpretation of section 417.3, we will not address the issue”].)

The issue in Michael D. was whether section 417.4 1 could be violated when only a bystander, and not the person against whom the imitation firearm was exhibited, experienced apprehension or fear. (Michael D., supra, 100 Cal.App.4th at p. 119, 121 Cal.Rptr.2d 909.) The court determined the answer was yes but once again had no occasion to consider whether it would likewise be sufficient if a reasonable person in the bystander's position would have experienced apprehension or fear. Moreover, the court ultimately did frame the question of sufficient evidence in objective terms — i.e., as whether “a reasonable person in [the victim]’s position would have felt apprehension or fear of bodily harm.” (Id. at p. 126, 121 Cal.Rptr.2d 909, italics added.)

The remaining cases on which Ball purports to rely, none of which involved the question presented here, are unavailing as he has simply too narrowly construed the purpose of section 417.3 and the harms the Legislature intended to address. We therefore hold that a person violates section 417.3 by brandishing a firearm in a threatening manner in the presence of an occupant of a motor vehicle proceeding on a public street or highway “in such a way as to cause a reasonable person apprehension or fear of bodily harm.” There is no additional requirement that the victim subjectively experience apprehension or fear. 2

Because the evidence at the preliminary hearing supported the inference that a reasonable person in the off-duty officer's position would have experienced apprehension or fear, the magistrate correctly held Ball to answer to the brandishing charge under section 417.3. (See Lexin v. Superior Court (2010) 47 Cal.4th 1050, 1077–1078, 103 Cal.Rptr.3d 767, 222 P.3d 214.)

III. Disposition

The judgment of the Court of Appeal is affirmed.

FOOTNOTES

1.   Section 417.4 provides: “Every person who, except in self-defense, draws or exhibits an imitation firearm ․ in a threatening manner against another in such a way as to cause a reasonable person apprehension or fear of bodily harm is guilty of a misdemeanor․” The construction of this statute is not before us.

2.   Ball has not shown that his interpretation of section 417.3 was reasonable, let alone that it stands in relative equipoise with the natural reading of the statute. The rule of lenity thus has no application here. (See People v. Superior Court (Sahlolbei) (2017) 3 Cal.5th 230, 244, 219 Cal.Rptr.3d 436, 396 P.3d 568.)

Opinion of the Court by Evans, J.

We Concur: GUERRERO, C. J. CORRIGAN, J. LIU, J. KRUGER, J. GROBAN, J. HUMES, J.*