Arkansas Concealed Carry Permit

Arkansas has NO state statute prohibiting an individual from making a firearm for personal use, NO state serialization or marking requirement for a self-made firearm, and NO state firearm registry. Arkansas's serial-number statutes run the other direction — they punish REMOVING a mark that already exists, not failing to apply one. Both sections were re-read on 2026-09-15 in the ASP's compilation of §§ 5-73-101 through 5-73-133 updated August 1, 2025, and both are unchanged. § 5-73-106(a): 'A person commits the offense of defacing a firearm if he or she knowingly removes, defaces, mars, covers, alters, or destroys the manufacturer's serial number or identification mark of a firearm' (Class D felony; History: Acts 1975, No. 280, § 3106; A.S.A. 1947, § 41-3106 — never amended). § 5-73-107(a) makes it an offense to knowingly possess 'a firearm with a manufacturer's serial number or other identification mark required by law that has been removed, defaced, marred, altered, or destroyed' (Class D felony; Class A misdemeanor if the mark is 'merely covered or obstructed, but still retrievable'), with defenses for reporting the possession before arrest and for firearms manufactured before January 1, 1968 (History: last amended 2017, No. 73, § 1). Both provisions are keyed to a 'manufacturer's serial number' or a mark 'required by law' — a firearm made by a non-licensee for personal use has neither, so neither statute is triggered by an unserialized homemade gun. Arkansas's only registration-style firearms provisions are the separate machine gun registry (§§ 5-73-207 through 5-73-209), which is a manufacturer/dealer recordkeeping regime, not a homebuilder requirement. FEDERAL LAW STILL CONTROLS AND IS THE REAL CONSTRAINT: (a) making an NFA item (short-barreled rifle/shotgun, suppressor, machine gun, AOW) requires an approved ATF Form 1 and payment of the making tax before manufacture — § 5-73-104's prohibited-weapons list also reaches such items, and 18 U.S.C. § 922(o) bars new machine guns outright; (b) 18 U.S.C. § 922(p) bars undetectable firearms; (c) a person may not make a firearm if they are a prohibited person; (d) building with intent to sell or distribute requires an FFL under 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(1)(A) and triggers marking duties under § 923(i); (e) ATF Final Rule 2021R-05F (2022) redefined 'frame or receiver' and reached certain parts kits, and the Supreme Court upheld the rule against facial challenge in Bondi v. VanDerStok (2025), so a kit that qualifies as a 'firearm' must be transferred through an FFL and comes serialized. Building an unserialized firearm for yourself remains lawful under both Arkansas and federal law; SELLING it later is where liability attaches. The August 1, 2025 ASP compilation shows the only post-2023 amendment anywhere in §§ 5-73-101 through 5-73-133 is Acts 2025, No. 508 (which revised the § 5-73-101 definitions, adding a definition of 'United States Armed Forces', and amended § 5-73-105); nothing in the 2023 or 2025 regular sessions addressed privately made firearms, unfinished frames or receivers, or 3D-printed firearms.

Ark. Code Ann. §§ 5-73-106 (Defacing a firearm) and 5-73-107 (Possession of a defaced firearm); see also § 5-73-104 (prohibited weapons) and § 5-73-105 (legitimate manufacture, repair, and transportation)

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What we could not confirm

• DC AND U.S. TERRITORIES: Ark. Code Ann. § 5-73-321 recognizes a license 'issued to the person by another state,' and the Arkansas State Police's own current rule (5 CAR § 1-210(a)(1), July 8, 2025) repeats the phrase 'another state' without elaboration. Neither the statute, the rule, nor any ASP publication I could find states whether the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, or American Samoa qualify as a 'state.' I deliberately excluded DC and all territories from reciprocity.honors rather than guess. A DC or territorial licensee in Arkansas is in practice protected by Arkansas's own permitless carry (§ 5-73-329) unless they are in a prohibited place, but the recognition question itself is unresolved. This is the one open item that could change reciprocity.honors.
• VERMONT: excluded from reciprocity.honors because Vermont issues no concealed carry permit at all, so there is no Vermont license for Arkansas to recognize. This is an artifact of Vermont's system, not an Arkansas exclusion. If the downstream consumer expects a literal all-50 list under blanket recognition, VT should be re-added with that caveat.
• PERMITLESS CARRY AGE OF 18: this remains my reading of §§ 5-73-119(a)(1) and 5-73-120 rather than an agency statement. The reading is now stronger than it was on 2026-08-10, because I verified both sections on 2026-09-15 against the Arkansas State Police's own compilation of §§ 5-73-101 through 5-73-133 updated August 1, 2025 — an agency-published text current through the 2025 regular session — and both are unchanged: no person under 18 may possess a handgun, and carrying is an offense only with 'a purpose to attempt to unlawfully employ' the weapon against a person. I also read the ASP's July 8, 2025 Concealed Handgun Carry License Rules in full and they are silent on any permitless-carry age, because they govern only the license. So no Arkansas statute or rule sets a 21-year floor for carrying without a license, and the 21 in § 5-73-309(3) is expressly a licensing criterion. Nearly every commercial permit-aggregator site nevertheless asserts 21 (or 21 with an 18 military exception); I found no statutory or regulatory basis for their figure. Treat 18 as statute-derived and now corroborated by a current agency compilation, but still not affirmatively stated by any Arkansas agency, and note that federal law separately blocks 18-20 year olds from buying a handgun at a dealer.
• NOVEMBER 14, 2025 AG OPINION — STILL NOT RETRIEVED. Multiple news outlets report an Arkansas AG opinion dated November 14, 2025, issued at the request of Rep. Sonia Eubanks Barker, holding that open carry is not prohibited in municipal parks or at athletic events, that concealed carry IS prohibited at athletic events absent a § 5-73-322(g) enhanced endorsement, and that both open and concealed carry are prohibited in municipal buildings absent that endorsement. I again failed to reach the opinion itself on 2026-09-15: https://arkansasag.gov/opinions/ returns HTTP 404; the AG's opinions search at https://prod.opinions-search.arkansasag.gov/ is a JavaScript application that returns no renderable content to a fetcher, so the opinion text cannot be read without a browser; and a guessed direct PDF path returned 404. A search-engine summary asserted the opinion number is 2025-031, but that number appears only in secondary aggregation and I could not confirm it against any arkansasag.gov page — DO NOT PUBLISH THAT NUMBER. Do not quote the opinion. AG opinions are advisory and not binding on courts.
• MAY 2026 LITTLE ROCK RULING — now better characterized but still not read in the original. Press reporting indicates Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox ruled in May 2026 (order reported on May 22, 2026) that Little Rock's ban on firearms on city property violates Arkansas law, at least as applied to holders of the § 5-73-322(g) enhanced endorsement, relying on the state firearm-preemption statute and the 2021 expansion of the enhanced-carry law; and that on June 29, 2026 Judge Fox declined to stay his own ruling, with the city stating it intends to appeal. I did not retrieve the order or docket, so I cannot confirm the case name, the precise holding, or the current appellate posture. This affects WHERE you may carry in Little Rock, not whether a permit is required anywhere in Arkansas.
• CURRENCY OF § 5-73-306 (PROHIBITED PLACES): the Arkansas State Police still publishes the concealed-handgun subchapter (§§ 5-73-301 through 5-73-329) only as a compilation 'Updated August 3, 2023', even though it has since reissued the chapter-1 compilation (§§ 5-73-101 through 5-73-133) as of August 1, 2025. I therefore cannot rule out a 2025 amendment to § 5-73-306 itself. I verified from the August 1, 2025 compilation that the only post-2023 amendment anywhere in §§ 5-73-101 through 133 is Acts 2025, No. 508, but that compilation does not cover subchapter 3. Anyone relying on the prohibited-places list should check § 5-73-306 against a current code service before publishing place-by-place guidance.
• FINGERPRINT VENDOR COST: § 5-73-311(a)(3)(C) puts Live Scan processing costs on the applicant. The amount is set by the individual Live Scan operator, not by ASP, and is not published as a single figure. It is separate from the $90.61 online portal total, which ASP describes as covering 'application and background check.' The exact boundary between the portal's background-check component and the vendor's Live Scan charge is not documented.
• SHALL-ISSUE CLASSIFICATION: § 5-73-309 is mandatory ('shall issue' if criteria met) and the ASP's own rule at 5 CAR § 1-202(a) repeats that the Director 'shall issue' to an applicant meeting §§ 5-73-308 and 5-73-309. But § 5-73-308(a)(1) and (b)(1) give the Director discretionary authority to deny for recent misdemeanor violence, a recent carrying-a-weapon conviction, an active criminal investigation, or a sheriff's/police chief's dangerousness affidavit. Arkansas is properly classified shall-issue, but it is not purely ministerial. Denials are appealable under the Arkansas Administrative Procedure Act (5 CAR § 1-208).
• ACTUAL ISSUANCE TIME: the 120-day figure is the statutory ceiling (§ 5-73-308(b)(2)) and the ASP page repeats 'up to four months.' ASP publishes no median or typical processing time, so the real-world wait is unknown.
• LEGACY URLS ON THE ASP PAGE: the ASP's own CHCL page still links the retired chcl.ark.org and www.ark.org/ina_renewalservices addresses. Those addresses return HTTP 301 to the asp.ark.org equivalents recorded in this record, so both work today, but the agency page and this record now disagree on spelling. If the redirects are ever retired, the ASP page will break before this record does.