Rhode Island Concealed Carry Permit

Rhode Island bans ghost guns outright. § 11-47-8(e): "No person shall manufacture, sell, offer to sell, transfer, purchase, possess, or have under his or her control a ghost gun or an undetectable firearm or any firearm produced by a 3D printing process," punishable by imprisonment up to ten (10) years and/or a fine up to $10,000. The sole exception is for federally licensed manufacturers holding an ATF Type 07 FFL. § 11-47-2(9) (as amended by P.L. 2025, ch. 428) defines "ghost gun" as "a firearm, including a frame or receiver, that lacks a unique serial number engraved or cased in metal alloy on the frame or receiver by a licensed manufacturer, maker, or importer under federal law or markings in accordance with 27 C.F.R. § 479.102. It does not include a firearm that has been rendered permanently inoperable, or a firearm that is not required to have a serial number in accordance with the federal Gun Control Act of 1968." Because the required serial must be applied BY a federally licensed manufacturer, maker, or importer — which a private individual building a gun for personal use is not — there is no practical lawful route for an unlicensed Rhode Islander to build a firearm for personal use; anyone wishing to manufacture must obtain a Type 07 FFL. Separately, Chapter 11-47.2 ("Unlawful Sale of Prohibited Firearms", enacted by P.L. 2025, ch. 281, § 1) took effect on July 1, 2026 and is now in force: § 11-47.2-2(a) provides that "No person shall manufacture, sell, offer to sell, transfer, or purchase a prohibited firearm, except as otherwise authorized under this section," punishable by imprisonment of not more than ten (10) years or a fine up to $10,000, with forfeiture of the firearm. Its § 11-47.2-2(b) exceptions permit a lawful possessor to sell or transfer to a federally licensed dealer or to an out-of-state person who may lawfully possess the weapon, dealer-to-dealer and dealer-to-law-enforcement transfers, and law enforcement acquisitions. That chapter restricts manufacture, sale, transfer and purchase but does not by its terms criminalise continued lawful possession. Rhode Island maintains no firearm registry — § 11-47-41 is titled "Government firearm registration prohibited" — so there is no state registration of a self-made firearm; the serialisation requirement is a criminal prohibition, not a registration scheme.

R.I. Gen. Laws § 11-47-8(e); § 11-47-2(9); § 11-47.2-2

Federal law, gunsmithing schools, and tools →

What we could not confirm

• permitSystem is a single enum value and cannot capture Rhode Island's two tracks. It is coded 'shall-issue' because that describes the LOCAL § 11-47-11 permit, which is the route an ordinary applicant can obtain as of right: the Attorney General's own guidance AG 2022-01 states that municipal licensing authorities 'shall issue' to qualified, suitable applicants and that 'local law enforcement cannot require a showing of need as part of the application to obtain a permit,' citing Gadomski v. Tavares, 113 A.3d 387, 392 (R.I. 2015). Note the tension with the literal text of § 11-47-11(a), which still conditions issuance on the applicant having 'good reason to fear an injury to his or her person or property or has any other proper reason' and being 'a suitable person to be so licensed.' The parallel Attorney General permit under § 11-47-18 is genuinely discretionary may-issue: the AG's published policy says 'No one in the State has a right to obtain a pistol permit. A pistol permit is a privilege left to the sound discretion of the Attorney General,' and even a proper showing of need only opens the door to discretion. Read every discretion finding in this record as track-specific.
• How consistently individual Rhode Island municipalities actually process § 11-47-11 applications could not be verified from any primary source. There is no statewide local application form, no statewide directory of municipal licensing authorities, and no state page tracking municipal compliance. § 11-47-2(10) defines the 'licensing authorities' as the board of police commissioners where one exists, otherwise the chief or superintendent of police, or in a town with no chief the town clerk acting on the town sergeant's recommendation — so the office an applicant deals with varies by municipality, and applicants must contact their own city or town directly.
• No published processing time on either track. Neither § 11-47-11 nor § 11-47-18 imposes a decision deadline and neither the Attorney General nor any municipality publishes a target, so no figure could be stated.
• Rhode Island publishes no official list of state-certified firearms instructors, so instructorRegistryUrl is null. § 11-47-16 delegates certification to RISP and municipal police range officers, to NRA/USRA-certified pistol instructors, and to 'any other qualified persons that the attorney general may designate.' Whether the Attorney General maintains a non-public list of persons so designated, and what form he has prescribed under § 11-47-16 for the certification, could not be determined from the official site.
• reciprocity.honors is empty based on the complete absence of any reciprocity provision in Chapter 11-47, the absence of the word 'reciprocity' anywhere in the Attorney General's 38-page permit packet, and the absence of a reciprocity page on riag.ri.gov or risp.ri.gov. I still could not find an affirmative official sentence reading 'Rhode Island honors no other state's permit'; the conclusion rests on the licensing requirement in § 11-47-8(a) plus the narrowness of its transport-through exception, which by its terms applies only while the out-of-state holder is 'merely transporting the firearm through the state.' This remains a strong inference from primary sources rather than a direct official quotation.
• homeManufacture: § 11-47-2(9)'s exclusion for 'a firearm that is not required to have a serial number in accordance with the federal Gun Control Act of 1968' is textually ambiguous, because a firearm privately made for personal use is not itself required to be serialized under the GCA. Read broadly, that carve-out could swallow the ghost gun ban. No Rhode Island appellate decision, AG opinion, or published AG guidance construing this clause was located. selfManufactureAllowed is coded false because that is the evident legislative purpose and because the statutory serial must be applied 'by a licensed manufacturer, maker, or importer,' but a reader should treat this as an area of genuine legal risk rather than settled law and consult a Rhode Island attorney before building any firearm.
• nonResidentPermitAvailable is coded true and is best supported on the LOCAL track: § 11-47-11(a) expressly directs a city or town licensing authority to issue to 'any person twenty-one (21) years of age or over having a bona fide residence within the United States and a license or permit to carry a pistol or revolver concealed upon his or her person issued by the authorities of any other state or subdivision of the United States.' On the AG track the position is less clean: the statute itself, § 11-47-18(a), says 'any person twenty-one (21) years of age or over' with no residency limit, and the AG's own instruction page requires that 'All NON-RESIDENT APPLICANTS must include a copy of their home state permit, notarized' — but the AG's public pistol-permits page nonetheless describes § 11-47-18 as empowering him to issue 'to state residents 21 years of age or older.' The statutory text controls over the web page's gloss, but the AG track is discretionary in any event, so a non-resident has no assurance of issuance there.
• The § 11-47-18 'proper showing of need' policy reproduced in the AG packet is still dated January 23, 2001 and predates Bruen; the packet states it 'supersedes all prior policies.' Whether the Attorney General has since narrowed or revised that policy in unpublished practice could not be determined from the official site. A federal district court decision reported in August 2025 is said to have upheld § 11-47-18's showing-of-need requirement for open carry on summary judgment, with an appeal announced; I could not find any primary-source confirmation of that decision on riag.ri.gov, governor.ri.gov or rid.uscourts.gov, so it is not relied on or cited here. Either way it would not change the statutory text.
• The Rhode Island General Assembly's bill-status system at status.rilegislature.gov is an ASP.NET postback application that will not return results to a plain URL request, so I could not read H 7754's official action history. Its non-enactment is inferred from the official statute server instead: § 11-47-11's 'History of Section' line still ends at P.L. 1998, ch. 268, § 1, and no P.L. 2026 citation appears anywhere in Chapter 11-47 or Chapter 11-47.2, even though the same server does carry the 2025 session's amendments (P.L. 2025, ch. 428 at § 11-47-2; chs. 165, 166, 196 and 197 at § 11-47-9; ch. 281 creating Chapter 11-47.2). If that server lags the 2026 session, a 2026 amendment could exist that this record does not reflect.
• PENDING LEGISLATION TO WATCH: 2026 H 7754 (introduced February 12, 2026 by Rep. Fogarty and eight co-sponsors, referred to House Judiciary, effective upon passage) would strike from § 11-47-11(a) the clause allowing a person with a bona fide residence anywhere in the United States who holds another state's carry permit to apply to a Rhode Island city or town, and would require Rhode Island residents to apply to the town of their own bona fide residence or place of business. If it is enacted, nonResidentPermitAvailable on the local track becomes false and the last practical route for a non-resident to obtain a Rhode Island permit as of right disappears. As of 2026-09-15 it is not law.