Pennsylvania Concealed Carry Permit

Pennsylvania has no statute prohibiting a non-prohibited adult from building a firearm for personal use, and no statute requiring a serial number or state registration on a self-made firearm. Re-verified 2026-09-15 by full-text search of the official Chapter 61 PDF (Uniform Firearms Act): the words "untraceable", "unfinished", "self-manufactured", "personally made" and "ghost" appear nowhere in the chapter, and no serialisation mandate exists. Manufacture is restricted only as to PROHIBITED PERSONS — § 6105 is titled 'persons not to possess, use, manufacture, control, sell or transfer firearms', so a person disqualified under § 6105 may not manufacture one. No registry is permitted: § 6111.4 provides that 'nothing in this chapter shall be construed to allow any government or law enforcement agency or any agent thereof to create, maintain or operate any registry of firearm ownership within this Commonwealth,' expressly including frames and receivers. So there is no state registration of any firearm, homemade or not. IMPORTANT ADJACENT FELONY: § 6110.2 makes it a FELONY OF THE SECOND DEGREE to possess a firearm whose manufacturer's number integral to the frame or receiver 'has had ... altered, changed, removed or obliterated.' By its terms this addresses defacing an existing number rather than a firearm that never bore one, but that distinction as applied to homemade firearms is a matter of Pennsylvania case law that was not confirmed against a primary source here. Do not remove or deface any existing serial number. § 6120 preempts counties and municipalities from regulating lawful firearm ownership, possession, transfer or transportation, which has been the basis for challenges to local ghost-gun ordinances (e.g. Philadelphia). SEPARATELY, FEDERAL LAW STILL APPLIES and is not addressed by any of the above: making a firearm for personal use without a license is generally permissible federally, but ATF Final Rule 2021R-05F treats certain unfinished frames/receivers and parts kits as firearms requiring serialization and a licensed transfer, the Undetectable Firearms Act applies, and building with intent to sell requires an FFL. State silence is not federal permission.

18 Pa.C.S. §§ 6105, 6110.2, 6111.4; see also 18 Pa.C.S. § 6120

Federal law, gunsmithing schools, and tools →

What we could not confirm

• ARIZONA, CONNECTICUT and RHODE ISLAND reciprocity remains internally contradicted on the Attorney General's own page, re-confirmed on 2026-09-15: each answers "Yes" to whether that state's resident licensees may carry in PA, while the table immediately beneath reports "No" for both bases it lists (written agreement and without written agreement), and none has an agreement PDF. This round narrowed but did not close the question: 18 Pa.C.S. § 6109(k)(1) empowers the Attorney General to "grant recognition of a license or permit to carry a firearm issued by another state" unilaterally, and the page's outbound tables carry a third row for exactly that ("Through Unilateral Recognition or License Not Required") which the inbound tables omit — so the "Yes" is legally possible without an agreement. I could not confirm from any primary source that such a unilateral recognition has in fact been granted for these three states. Relying on them risks a third-degree felony under § 6106(a)(1). Confirm with the Office of Attorney General before carrying in PA on an AZ, CT or RI permit. This is still the single largest unresolved item.
• The AG reciprocity page displays no last-updated or effective date anywhere in its markup, and the server returns no Last-Modified header, so I cannot confirm how current the reciprocity determinations are. Retrieved 2026-09-15.
• fingerprintsRequired is false because 18 Pa.C.S. § 6109 contains no fingerprint requirement (the word appears nowhere in the section; the only mention in Chapter 61 is PSP's own records check under § 6111). I checked three issuing agencies directly — Philadelphia Police Gun Permits Unit, Chester County Sheriff and Centre County Sheriff — and none lists fingerprinting, but I did not check the remaining 64 county sheriffs, so a local fingerprinting practice somewhere cannot be ruled out. Note that a photograph IS required statewide under § 6109(e)(4), and Philadelphia makes the applicant supply a 2"x2" passport photo.
• Non-resident availability is the sharpest divergence between statewide law and county practice, and it is only partly mapped. PSP says Pennsylvania may license out-of-state residents who hold a home-state permit, and warns that some sheriffs will not; Centre County accepts non-residents while Chester County requires county residency. I verified only those two counties plus Philadelphia, so a non-resident cannot tell from this record which of the 67 issuing agencies will process the application without calling first.
• The Pennsylvania Supreme Court's treatment of Commonwealth v. Sumpter is unverified. I read the full Superior Court majority opinion (filed 23 June 2025, a 2-1 panel decision with Judge Lane dissenting) and confirmed that the holding is as-applied, rests on Fourteenth Amendment equal protection under strict scrutiny, and expressly does not decide whether an open-carry license requirement violates the Second Amendment or reach the § 6109 licensing regime. I also confirmed the Superior Court still cited Sumpter as standing precedent on 1 June 2026 in Commonwealth v. Caruso. I did not search the Supreme Court docket for a petition for allowance of appeal, so I cannot say whether allocatur has been sought or granted.
• How Philadelphia is enforcing § 6108 for unlicensed OPEN carry post-Sumpter is unconfirmed. Caruso (1 June 2026) keeps § 6108 enforceable for concealed carry, and Caruso quotes Commonwealth v. Carthon for the proposition that an 18-to-20-year-old "may openly carry a weapon anywhere in the Commonwealth — including in the City of Philadelphia," but neither the Philadelphia Police Department nor PSP publishes any statement of current open-carry enforcement policy in the city. Anyone considering unlicensed open carry in Philadelphia should get counsel rather than rely on this record.
• Home manufacture: PA statutes are silent, which I read as permissive, but I could not confirm from a primary source how Pennsylvania courts apply § 6110.2 (altered manufacturer's number, a second-degree felony) to a homemade firearm that never bore a serial number. Anyone building a firearm in PA should get counsel on this specific point.
• permitSystem is reported as shall-issue, but 18 Pa.C.S. § 6109(e)(1)(i) lets the issuing authority deny an applicant "whose character and reputation is such that the individual would be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety," which is genuine discretion exercised county by county. Pennsylvania does not fit the shall-issue label as cleanly as most shall-issue states, and how aggressively that ground is used is not published by any county I checked.
• instructorRegistryUrl is null because Pennsylvania requires no training and therefore certifies no instructors. I re-confirmed the absence of any training or proficiency requirement in § 6109 but did not find an official page affirmatively stating that no instructor registry exists.
• The General Assembly's HTML statute viewer at palegis.us is a JavaScript application that returns only the page shell to a non-browser fetch, for both § 6106 and § 6109. All statutory quotations in this record were therefore taken from the General Assembly's own official Chapter 61 PDF at the same site, downloaded 2026-09-15 and read in full; no Internet Archive capture was needed. The PDF carries no printed currency date, but § 6109's amendment history ends with Act 10 of 2011 and § 6106's with Act 131 of 2008, consistent with no recent legislative change.
• The District of Columbia issues carry permits but has no block on the AG reciprocity page, so whether PA recognizes a DC permit is not addressed by the state's own source. DC is excluded from honors on that basis rather than on an affirmative "No".