Utah Concealed Carry Permit

Utah has no statute prohibiting an individual from building a firearm for personal use, and no statute requiring a self-made firearm to bear a serial number or be registered with the state. None of §§ 53-5a-105, 402, 403 or 404 was amended in the 2026 General Session; all remain at their 5/7/2025 text. Utah affirmatively legislates in favor of state-made firearms: Title 53, Chapter 5a, Part 4 (Utah State-Made Firearms Protections) declares in § 53-5a-402 that a personal firearm, action, receiver, accessory, or ammunition manufactured in Utah to be used or sold within Utah 'is not subject to federal law or federal regulation,' and § 53-5a-403 applies that Part to firearms made in-state from basic materials without significant imported parts (excluding crew-served firearms, bores over 1-1/2 inches using smokeless powder, firearms discharging two or more projectiles per trigger pull other than shotguns, and chemically-explosive projectiles). Serialization: there is no general mandate. § 53-5a-105(1) provides only that the department 'upon request, may assign' a distinguishing number to a handgun that lacks a manufacturer's number - voluntary, not required. TRAP WORTH FLAGGING: § 53-5a-105(2) makes it a CLASS A MISDEMEANOR for an individual to place or stamp any identification mark or distinguishing number on a handgun other than one assigned by the department (exceptions: department-authorized restoration of an original marking by the owner, a manufacturer marking a new handgun in the ordinary course of business, and antique firearms). So a home builder who wants a number on a self-made handgun should request one from DPS rather than invent and stamp one. Separately, § 53-5a-404 requires that a firearm, action, or receiver 'manufactured or sold in Utah under this part' be stamped 'Made in Utah' or 'Made in UT' on a central metallic part such as the receiver or frame - this marking obligation attaches to firearms made under the Part 4 intrastate regime, not to every home-built gun generally. TWO SERIOUS FEDERAL CAVEATS: (1) Part 4's premise that in-state manufacture escapes federal jurisdiction is a Firearms Freedom Act-style provision; materially identical state laws have been rejected by the federal courts, and federal law (18 U.S.C. ch. 44, including the licensing requirement for manufacturing for sale or distribution, the National Firearms Act, and ATF's 2022 frame-or-receiver rule) continues to apply regardless of what Utah says. Do not treat § 53-5a-402 as a shield against federal prosecution. (2) A prohibited person may not build or possess a firearm under either Utah law (Title 76, Chapter 11, Part 3) or federal law.

Utah Code § 53-5a-105 (number or mark assigned to a handgun by the department); § 53-5a-403 (intrastate firearm manufacturing); § 53-5a-404 (required markings); § 53-5a-402 (legal considerations); § 53-5a-102 (uniform firearm laws / state preemption)

Federal law, gunsmithing schools, and tools →

What we could not confirm

• MAJOR RECODIFICATION - citations in circulation are stale. Effective 5/7/2025 (2025 Gen. Sess. ch. 173 and ch. 208), Utah moved its weapons offenses from Title 76, Chapter 10, Part 5 into a new Title 76, Chapter 11 (Weapons), and moved the Concealed Firearm Act from Title 53, Chapter 5, Part 7 into a new Title 53, Chapter 5a (Firearm Laws). The old sections (76-10-503, 76-10-504, 76-10-505, 76-10-523, 53-5-704, 53-5-707) NO LONGER EXIST - le.utah.gov returns no current version for them. Any source still citing 76-10-523(5) or 53-5-704 is out of date. BCI's own application page still cites the repealed 'Section 76-10-503,' so even the agency site lags the code; the code text was treated as controlling where they diverge. Note also that § 53-5a-304(4)(d) and § 53-5a-305(4) still contain uncorrected references to the repealed §§ 53-5-303 and 53-5-704.
• Fees rise on 1 October 2026 and this record states the fee in effect on the verification date. BCI's Concealed Firearm Permits page announces that, effective October 1, 2026, the initial application fee becomes $55.00 for residents and $90.00 for non-residents (FBI fingerprint processing increase). fees.initial is recorded as 52 because $52/$87 is what BCI published as current on 15 September 2026; anyone publishing or reading this record on or after 1 October 2026 should treat fees.initial as 55 and the non-resident initial as 90. Renewal fees were not announced as changing.
• Because § 53-5a-307 now lets the bureau set every permit fee administratively (fixed statutory amounts apply only 'before July 1, 2026'), Utah permit fees can change at any time without a legislative amendment and without appearing in the statute. Always re-check https://bci.utah.gov/concealed-firearm/ rather than the code for the current amount.
• No stated processing time for INITIAL applications. BCI publishes '4 weeks' only for renewals; the 60-day figure is the statutory maximum in § 53-5a-303(1)(a), not an observed turnaround.
• District of Columbia and U.S. territory (PR, VI, GU, AS, MP) licenses: neither § 53-5a-102.2(1)(c) ('a concealed carry permit lawfully issued by or in another state') nor BCI's page ('any other state or county') expressly addresses them, so they were deliberately omitted from reciprocity.honors rather than guessed. Practically moot for anyone 21 or older given permitless carry.
• Internal cross-reference conflict in the code, still unfixed in the 5/6/2026 text. Section 53-5a-102.2 refers in (1)(a), (1)(c) and (2)(a) to a provisional permit 'issued under Section 53-5a-305' and to a temporary permit 'issued under Section 53-5a-304', while its own (2)(d)(i) refers to a provisional permit 'under Section 53-5a-304'. Section 76-11-220(4) likewise points to § 53-5a-305 for the provisional permit, whereas § 76-11-202(2)(b) points to § 53-5a-304. Reading the sections themselves settles it: § 53-5a-304 is titled 'Provisional permit to carry concealed firearm' and covers ages 18-20, and § 53-5a-305 is titled 'Temporary permit to carry concealed firearm' (90-day maximum). That is the reading used here, but a reader should expect to see both numbers cited for the provisional permit until the Legislature corrects the drafting error.
• BCI's 'Provisional Concealed Firearm Permit' page (https://bci.utah.gov/concealed-firearm/provisional-concealed-firearm-permit/) still returns HTTP 404, so provisional-permit details come from statute (§§ 53-5a-304, 53-5a-308) and from the combined standard/provisional application form on BCI's forms page rather than from dedicated agency guidance.
• Training hours: Utah sets no numeric hour requirement anywhere in statute, so training.hours is left empty rather than filled with a commonly-repeated but unsourced figure (e.g. '4 hours'). Actual course length is set by the individual BCI-certified instructor.
• le.utah.gov serves statute text only from its dated per-version URLs (the 'C53-5a-S303_2025050720250507.html' pattern). The undated URLs (e.g. /xcode/Title53/Chapter5a/53-5a-S303.html) and the part/chapter index pages return an HTTP 200 JavaScript shell with no statutory text, so every citation here was moved to a dated URL that actually renders. Each relied-on section was checked individually for a post-baseline version by probing its dated URL for the 2026 effective date; only §§ 53-5a-102.2 (Chapter 171) and 53-5a-307 (Chapter 243) have 2026 versions, and every other relied-on section's 5/7/2025 page carries no 'Superseded' marker.
• The Utah Legislature's passed-bills and chapter-index pages also render only via JavaScript, so the 2026 session-law chapter numbers taken from the code's own amendment history lines (Chapter 171 for § 53-5a-102.2, Chapter 243 for § 53-5a-307) could not be mapped to their H.B./S.B. numbers. The chapter citations are from the code pages themselves and are reliable; the bill numbers are simply unrecorded.
• Utah's state-made firearms Part (§§ 53-5a-401 to 404) asserts that in-state-manufactured firearms are outside federal jurisdiction. No court decision applying this specific Utah provision was located; materially similar state statutes elsewhere have been held preempted. The federal-law exposure of a Utah home builder is not resolved by the Utah statute and was flagged rather than endorsed.
• BCI's FAQ states flatly that 'the permit also allows an individual to carry a firearm into daycares and public schools.' That is true of a Utah standard permit carried concealed, but § 53-5a-102.2(2)(c)(ii) bars OPEN carry on K-12 and higher-education premises for all permit holders, and § 53-5a-102.2(2)(d) bars provisional holders from K-12 premises and out-of-state-only permit holders from K-12 and daycare premises. The statute, not the FAQ, was followed.