Texas Concealed Carry Permit

Texas has no statute prohibiting an eligible person from building or assembling a firearm for personal use, and no state serial-number, marking, or registration requirement for a self-made firearm. A full-text search of the current Texas Penal Code ch. 46 (Weapons), performed 15 September 2026 on the official chapter text, returns ZERO occurrences of the string "serial," and the chapter contains no unfinished-frame/receiver provision and no state firearms registry provision. The only manufacturing prohibition is § 46.05, which makes it an offense to intentionally or knowingly possess, MANUFACTURE, transport, repair, or sell an explosive weapon, machine gun, short-barrel firearm, armor-piercing ammunition, a chemical dispensing device, a zip gun, a tire deflation device, or an improvised explosive device — unless the item is registered in the federal National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record or is otherwise not subject to that requirement. (H.B. 957, 87th Leg., 2021, repealed the firearm-silencer entry from § 46.05, so suppressors are no longer a Texas prohibited weapon.) Building a machine gun or short-barrel firearm at home therefore remains a Texas felony absent NFA registration. FEDERAL law applies independently regardless of Texas law: the National Firearms Act, 18 U.S.C. § 922(o) (machine guns), § 922(p) (undetectable firearms), § 922(r), the prohibition on manufacturing for sale without an FFL, and ATF's frame/receiver rule. Texas also broadly preempts local firearm regulation (Tex. Local Gov't Code § 229.001), so cities and counties may not impose their own serialization or registration rules.

Tex. Penal Code ch. 46 (esp. § 46.05, Prohibited Weapons); no Texas serialization or registration statute

Federal law, gunsmithing schools, and tools →

What we could not confirm

• RECIPROCITY CONFLICT (most important caveat, re-checked 15 September 2026 and STILL UNRESOLVED BY DPS): Texas's controlling statute and its own agency chart disagree. The codified text of Tex. Gov't Code § 411.173(b), which I read verbatim today, says flatly that "A valid license to carry a handgun issued by any other state is recognized in this state," and the section history shows subsections (c) and (d) — the old proclamation/agreement machinery — "Repealed by Acts 2025, 89th Leg., R.S., Ch. 483 (S.B. 706), Sec. 2, eff. September 1, 2025." But the DPS "State Reciprocity Information" page is still headed September 11, 2020, still displays the pre-2025 chart, and nowhere mentions S.B. 706 or universal recognition; it still shows Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, Vermont, D.C. and the territories as "No Agreement" and still states that Wisconsin license holders "will not be allowed to carry in Texas" and treats Minnesota the same way. The DPS Reciprocity FAQ likewise still frames recognition as depending on "a state that has reciprocity with Texas." I searched for and did not find ANY DPS page, news release, or updated chart acknowledging S.B. 706. I resolved the conflict in favor of the statute, because a statute controls over a stale agency web page and the amended subsection is unconditional — but this remains an unresolved contradiction between the law and the issuing agency's live publications, and it is the weakest point in this record. Anyone relying on an out-of-state license in Texas — especially an 18-20 year old, for whom permitless carry is unavailable — should confirm with DPS directly and should not assume a Texas officer is working from the amended statute rather than the published chart.
• APPLICATION CHANNEL IN TRANSITION (re-verified 15 September 2026): no new LTC application can be filed online right now. DPS is replacing the LTC and CAP licensing platform with RSD Connect, live 1 October 2026; the last day to apply on the old system was 12 September 2026 and the last day to submit supporting documents for a pending application was 14 September 2026. DPS says applications filed before the downtime resume processing in the new system. The old portal, https://txapps.texas.gov/txapp/txdps/ltc/, returns HTTP 404 (confirmed by direct request today). A NEW PROBLEM found today: the DPS "Licensing & Registration" page — the URL this record uses as officialApplicationUrl — carries no migration notice at all and still presents that dead txapps link as the "Submit an application online" step, so an applicant following the official page will hit a 404 with no explanation. Only the DPS news release documents the outage. I found no DPS page giving a post-1-October application URL, so officialApplicationUrl remains the section page; it will need re-checking after 1 October 2026.
• minAge is reported as 18 based on DPS's currently published Eligibility FAQ describing the Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc. v. McCraw injunction (N.D. Tex., No. 4:21-cv-1245-P), which I confirmed is still live on the DPS site today. The statutory text of § 411.172(a)(2) still reads "at least 21 years of age" and has not been amended. I could not independently confirm the injunction's appellate posture from a court source today: the CourtListener docket returned HTTP 403 and the govinfo case page returned no content. Non-primary sources indicate Texas noticed an appeal (5th Cir. No. 22-10898) and withdrew it in December 2022, which would make the August 2022 judgment final and unappealed, and nothing I found suggests the judgment has been stayed or vacated — but I did not read a docket entry saying so. The operative basis for reporting 18 is therefore the issuing agency's own live non-enforcement statement, not a verified court record. If the injunction were lifted, the answer would revert to 21 except for the § 411.172(g) military and § 411.172(i) protective-order pathways. Permitless carry unambiguously requires 21 either way.
• Whether recognition under § 411.173(b) extends to licenses issued by U.S. territories (PR, GU, VI, MP, AS) is my inference from the Code Construction Act definition of "State" (§ 311.005(7)), not from any Texas source naming those jurisdictions. Territories are therefore excluded from the honors array. I did not re-read § 311.005 today; that definition is carried forward from the 2026-08-10 research pass, though the live URL still resolves.
• Vermont is excluded from the honors array because Vermont issues no concealed-carry license at all, not because Texas declines to recognize one. That is my characterization, not a Texas statement.
• The live statutes.capitol.texas.gov site is a JavaScript single-page application that serves no statute text to non-browser clients — verified again today, when both the Government Code ch. 411 and Penal Code ch. 46 URLs returned byte-identical 28 KB shells with no statutory text. Verbatim statutory text was therefore read from Internet Archive captures of the official pages: Gov't Code ch. 411 captured 2025-12-05 and Penal Code ch. 46 captured 2025-12-02. (These supersede the capture dates cited in the previous version of this record; the Archive's monthly captures from January 2026 onward contain only the empty shell, so December 2025 is the most recent readable text.) Both captures post-date the 89th Legislature's September 1, 2025 effective dates, and the next Texas regular session is not until 2027, so no intervening statutory amendment is expected — but I could not read live 2026 statutory text directly to confirm, and a 2026 special session, if one occurred, would not be reflected.
• A 2026 administrative change was found that the previous research pass missed: DPS adopted amendments to 37 Tex. Admin. Code §§ 6.11, 6.16 and 6.46 effective 2 July 2026, requiring original and renewal LTC applicants (and instructor-certification renewal applicants) to submit proof of eligibility under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 for state or local public benefits including a professional or commercial license. I read this in the official Texas Register adopted-rules issue of 26 June 2026. I did NOT find a DPS page or form explaining what documents satisfy this requirement in practice, so the applicationSteps entry describes the requirement but not the accepted proof. Applicants should expect to document citizenship or qualified-alien status.
• Several DPS pages (the reciprocity chart, the Firearm Carry Act page, and multiple FAQs) display stale header dates — September 2020, July 2021 — while containing newer content, so page dates are not a reliable currency signal for any DPS page. Conversely the reciprocity chart's stale date does appear to reflect genuinely stale content.
• validityYears is given as 4 because that is the initial term, but § 411.183 is more precise: an initial license expires on the earlier of the holder's first birthday occurring after the fourth anniversary of issuance or the expiration of the holder's lawful presence in the United States (so 4-5 years in practice for a citizen), or the first anniversary of issuance if there is no definite lawful-presence expiration date; a renewed license expires on the holder's birthdate five years after the previous license expired. Protective-order-designated licenses expire at the holder's 22nd birthday or when the order ends (§ 411.1735(c)).
• Fingerprints are required for original applications (§ 411.174(a)(5) requires two complete sets); renewals normally reuse prints on file, so a renewal applicant may not need new prints. The FAST/IdentoGO fingerprint vendor fee is not published on the DPS fee table and is not included in the fee figures.
• For home manufacture I verified the absence of a Texas serialization or registration requirement by full-text search of Penal Code ch. 46 only (zero occurrences of "serial," re-confirmed today). I did not exhaustively search every other Texas code for a self-manufactured-firearm provision, though Texas's strong preemption posture and the absence of any such provision in the weapons chapter make one very unlikely. Federal requirements (NFA, 18 U.S.C. § 922(o)/(p)/(r), manufacturing-for-sale licensing, ATF's frame/receiver rule) are unaffected by Texas law and were not researched here.