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Cal. Penal Code § 246

Assault and Battery

Applied in 60 court decisions — leading case 14 Cal. 4th 605 - People v. Gardeley (1996)

Most recently applied in Rene Lemus-Escobar v. Pamela Bondi (June 2025)

Amended by Stats. 1988, Ch. 911, Sec. 1

How often courts cite this section

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citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

Any person who shall maliciously and willfully discharge a firearm at an inhabited dwelling house, occupied building, occupied motor vehicle, occupied aircraft, inhabited housecar, as defined in Section 362 of the Vehicle Code, or inhabited camper, as defined in Section 243 of the Vehicle Code, is guilty of a felony, and upon conviction shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for three, five, or seven years, or by imprisonment in the county jail for a term of not less than six months and not exceeding one year.

As used in this section, “inhabited” means currently being used for dwelling purposes, whether occupied or not.

Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.