Idaho Concealed Carry Permit

Idaho has no statute prohibiting an individual from building a firearm for personal use, no state serialization mandate for a self-made firearm, no state registration of firearms, and no state regulation of unfinished frames/receivers or firearm-manufacturing kits. A review of Title 18, Chapter 33 (Firearms, Explosives and Other Deadly Weapons, §§ 18-3301 through 18-3327) turned up no such provision. Affirmative support: the Idaho Constitution, art. I, § 11 provides "The people have the right to keep and bear arms, which right shall not be abridged" and expressly that "No law shall impose licensure, registration or special taxation on the ownership or possession of firearms or ammunition" — which forecloses a state firearm registry. Idaho Code § 18-3302J preempts local regulation: "It is the legislature's intent to wholly occupy the field of firearms regulation within this state," and no county, city, or political subdivision may regulate "the sale, acquisition, transfer, ownership, possession, transportation, carrying or storage of firearms or any element relating to firearms and components thereof, including ammunition." So a city or county cannot impose its own serialization or build-registration rule. Idaho Code § 18-3315B ("Prohibition of Regulation of Certain Firearms," added 2014 ch. 148, am. 2021 ch. 329) penalizes Idaho officials who enforce certain federal firearm measures and its findings address firearms "manufactured in Idaho from basic materials." What Idaho DOES criminalize is defacing an existing number: Idaho Code § 18-2410 makes it a felony where a person, "with intent to deceive or defraud others, shall deface, alter, remove, cover, destroy or obliterate the manufacturer's serial or identification number on any item of property" — that punishes removing a serial that already exists; it does not require an unserialized self-built firearm to be marked. IMPORTANT CAVEAT: federal law is unaffected by any of the above. Under the Gun Control Act and ATF's 2022 Final Rule 2021R-05F, a firearm built for personal use need not be marked, but building with intent to sell requires an FFL and serialization, National Firearms Act items require ATF approval and marking, and a prohibited person may not manufacture or possess a firearm at all. Idaho's § 18-3315B does not shield anyone from federal prosecution. Anyone relying on this should confirm current federal requirements; a violation can be a federal felony even where Idaho law is silent. UPDATE (verified 2026-09-15): § 18-3302J was amended by 2026 Idaho Sess. Laws ch. 295, sec. 1, after this record's previous review. The preemption language quoted above is unchanged, but the amendment strengthened enforcement: it extends the ban to an "executive order, or policy," declares an offending measure "void, unenforceable, and subject to a permanent injunction," removes good faith or advice of counsel as a defence, imposes a $10,000 civil penalty per violation on a violating county, city, agency, board or political subdivision, and lets the attorney general or any adversely affected person or organisation sue for damages, declaratory or injunctive relief with costs and attorney's fees, subject to a 30-day AG investigation and a 30-day cure notice. The practical effect is to make it harder, not easier, for an Idaho locality to impose a serialisation or build-registration rule.

Idaho Const. art. I, § 11; Idaho Code §§ 18-3302J, 18-3315B, 18-2410

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What we could not confirm

• THE DEFECT THIS REVIEW WAS ASKED TO CHECK, AND WHAT IT ACTUALLY IS. Our published Idaho figures were suspected of mixing licence classes - a $20 fee and 5-year term taken from the standard licence, presented next to a recognition count belonging to the enhanced one. Half of that suspicion is wrong and the other half is worse than suspected. The fee and the validity term are NOT class-specific: §§ 18-3302(15)-(16) and 18-3302K(7)-(8) set an identical $20 original / $15 renewal for both classes, and §§ 18-3302(7) and 18-3302K(1) both set a 5-year term (confirmed twice - in the statute HTML and in a raw download of the Chapter 33 PDF). So the $20 and 5-year figures describe both classes and are safe. The recognition figure is NOT safe. A single site-wide 'recognised by N states' number cannot describe Idaho at all, because Idaho's two licences are recognised differently by other states, and the class carrying the headline $20-with-no-training appeal is the WEAKER one. ISP's own signed per-state forms show at least five states honouring the enhanced licence while expressly refusing the standard licence (South Carolina's SLED form: "No" for Regular, "Yes" for Enhanced; plus Alaska, Minnesota, Nevada and Virginia each marking Enhanced only), and at least five recognising neither (Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon). Any recognition count we publish must therefore be attributed to a named class, or not published. A reader who buys the $20 no-training standard licence on the strength of an enhanced-licence recognition number could carry into South Carolina, Minnesota, Nevada, Virginia or Alaska believing they are lawful when they are not.
• I did not produce a per-class recognition COUNT and we should not publish one from this source. ISP links a separate reciprocity document for each of the 49 states, and they are a checkbox form ("Regular / Enhanced / Both / Neither"), but many are image-only scans or hand-marked, so the answer is machine-readable for only some of them. I downloaded all 49 and could read a definite answer for 22: enhanced-only AK, MN, NV, SC, VA; neither MA, NJ, NM, NY, OR; both AL, AR, FL, IN, MI, MT, NC, ND, OH, TN; regular-only CO and (on a hand-drawn checkmark, so less certain) WI. The remaining 27 (AZ, CA, CT, DE, GA, HI, IA, IL, KS, KY, LA, MD, ME, MO, MS, NE, NH, OK, PA, RI, SD, TX, UT, VT, WA, WV, WY) had no extractable mark - either no text layer at all or a blank or differently formatted form. Treat those 22 as proof that the classes diverge, not as a tally. Anyone carrying out of state should open their destination state's own PDF on the ISP page, check BOTH rows, and confirm with that state's issuing agency. Several of these forms are also years old (South Carolina's is signed July 21, 2022) and the signing state may have changed its rule since.
• Our previous application steps told readers an enhanced licence is "required if you want broader out-of-state reciprocity." That overstates it, and I have rewritten the step. No source says the enhanced licence is required for out-of-state carry generally; whether it matters depends entirely on the destination state, and for the ten states whose ISP forms mark "Both" the standard licence is enough. What the statute does say is § 18-3302K(14), which directs the attorney general to seek other states' "recognition and reciprocity of the enhanced license" - so the enhanced class is the one designed for travel, but 'designed for' is not 'required'.
• Literal age wording: § 18-3302(4)(f)(i) says permitless carry applies to a person who "[i]s over eighteen (18) years of age," while the Idaho Attorney General's official FAQ paraphrases it as "at least 18 years old." A hyper-literal reading of "over eighteen" could exclude someone on the day they turn 18; the AG's reading (and § 18-3302(3)(d)'s parallel "eighteen (18) years of age or older") indicates 18 is sufficient. I re-read both the statute and the AG FAQ on 2026-09-15 and the wording is unchanged, and I found no Idaho appellate decision resolving it. Anyone exactly 18 should treat this as unsettled. The same "over the age of twenty-one (21) years" phrasing appears in § 18-3302K(4)(a) for the enhanced licence.
• Residency differs by class, and this is easy to get wrong. The STANDARD licence has no residency requirement in § 18-3302's text at all. The ENHANCED licence does: § 18-3302K(4)(b) requires either 6 consecutive months' Idaho residency OR a current carry licence or permit issued by the applicant's own state of residence - so a non-resident with no home-state permit cannot get an Idaho enhanced licence. nonResidentPermitAvailable is recorded as true because it is true of the standard licence and, with a home-state permit, of both. The Idaho AG says a non-resident should "contact the county sheriff where you reside or where you intend to apply if you are not an Idaho resident," which indicates non-residents may apply, but no official source states a uniform statewide non-resident procedure, and because applications must be made in person to a sheriff, practice varies by county. Confirm with the specific sheriff.
• The ISP reciprocity page names only the 49 other U.S. states. It does not address the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands or American Samoa, and § 18-3302(5)(g) refers to a permit "from another state." Whether Idaho recognises a D.C. concealed pistol licence is therefore not confirmed by a primary source. (Practically moot for U.S. citizens 18+, who may carry permitless.)
• Idaho publishes no statewide roster of certified concealed-weapons or enhanced-CWL instructors. ISP publishes the Enhanced CWL Training Certificate form (reissued dated 2026-07-01) but not a list of qualified instructors, so instructorRegistryUrl remains null - re-confirmed against the live ISP page on 2026-09-15. Verify an instructor's NRA / nationally-recognised-organisation / Idaho POST credential directly with the county sheriff. This matters more since 2026 ch. 159 widened who may teach the legal portion of the course.
• § 18-3302 currently exists in two published versions and I re-diffed them line by line on 2026-09-15. The ONLY difference in the January 1, 2027 version (2026 Idaho Sess. Laws ch. 79, sec. 16) is the cross-reference in the mental-capacity disqualifier § 18-3302(11)(f)(iv), which changes "incapacitated person as defined in section 15-5-101" to "section 15-1-201" (conforming to the Uniform Guardianship Act recodification). No carry rule, age, fee, training or reciprocity provision changes on Jan. 1, 2027.
• Amendment check by code section (not by bill title), covering everything enacted after this record's previous review: I read the amendment-history line of each section I rely on. § 18-3302 ends at "am. 2026, ch. 79, sec. 16" (the Jan. 1, 2027 cross-reference above). § 18-3302K ends at "am. 2026, ch. 159, sec. 1" - that is 2026 H0573, effective July 1, 2026, which added the third category of permitted legal-portion instructor; the statute text we quote already reflects it. § 18-3302J ends at "am. 2026, ch. 295, sec. 1", which strengthened firearms-preemption enforcement (see homeManufacture.notes). Sweeping the whole chapter for post-2024 amendments turned up only those three, plus 2025 ch. 25 (an earlier § 18-3302K amendment) and 2025 ch. 32 (§§ 18-3313 / 18-3313A, false reports of explosives and of violence - irrelevant to carry). None of them changes permitless carry, minimum age, fees, validity, fingerprints or recognition. Caveat on currency: the legislature's statute pages say "Idaho Statutes are updated to the website July 1 following the legislative session," so they reflect the 2026 regular session but would not yet show an act from a later special session.
• Actual out-of-pocket cost per county is not published statewide. The $20/$15 statutory fees exclude fingerprint-processing and card-material pass-through costs, so totals differ by county; the AG acknowledges "[i]n some counties, this results in higher fees." For the enhanced licence the instructor's tuition for the 8-hour / 98-round course is a further unpublished cost that no statute caps, so the equal $20 statutory fee makes the two classes look equally cheap when they are not. Check the specific sheriff's fee schedule.
• Prohibited-place rules were summarised from the AG FAQ and § 18-3302C/D section titles rather than a line-by-line read of those sections; that field was outside the requested scope. Anyone relying on where-you-may-carry should read §§ 18-3302C, 18-3302D and 18-3309 directly, plus § 18-3302(25) on private property and on public property used for restricted-access events (which supersedes Herndon v. City of Sandpoint, 531 P.3d 1125 (Idaho 2023)). Note that permitless carry does not override any of these.