Vermont Concealed Carry Permit

Vermont does not issue a carry permit. A non-prohibited adult 18+ may carry without one.

Permitless carry is legal in Vermont

A non-prohibited adult aged 18 or older may carry a concealed handgun without a permit . YES — a non-prohibited adult may carry a concealed handgun in Vermont today with no permit, no training, no fee, and no registration. READ THIS ALONGSIDE permitSystem: "no-issue" here means Vermont issues no permit because none exists, NOT that concealed carry is restricted. Vermont is the original permitless-carry state; it has never required a carry permit and has never created one, which is why sinceYear is null rather than a date — there is no constitutional-carry enactment to point to. The legal mechanism is the absence of any prohibition. 13 V.S.A. § 4003 ('Carrying dangerous weapons') criminalizes carry ONLY when done 'with the intent to injure another' (2 years / $2,000; a felony carrying up to 10 years / $25,000 if the person intends to injure multiple persons). Carrying a concealed handgun without intent to injure is simply not an offense. Vermont draws no distinction between open and concealed carry, and none between residents and non-residents: a visitor from any state may carry on exactly the same terms as a Vermonter, with or without a home-state permit. 24 V.S.A. § 2295 preempts local carry ordinances, so no municipal permit layer exists either. Place restrictions still apply and are the real exposure — see disqualifiers.

Getting the permit anyway is still worth it for most people: other states recognize the permit, not your residency, so without one you generally cannot carry across state lines.

13 V.S.A. § 4003

There are 11 details on this page we could not confirm from a primary source. Read what they are before relying on this.

Requirements at a glance

Permit name	None issued
Issuing authority	None — no Vermont agency issues a concealed carry permit or license. Verified two ways: (1) the Department of Public Safety / Vermont State Police licensing page enumerates every license and permit DPS issues — Assembly Permits, Precious Metal Dealer Licensing, Explosive License, Firearm Storage Program, and Scrap Metal Processor Obligations — and no firearm carry permit appears; (2) the full text of 13 V.S.A. chapter 85 (Weapons) contains no carry-licensing provision. The word "conceal" appears exactly once in the entire chapter, in § 4005 (carrying a weapon "openly or concealed" while committing a felony), and the strings "license to carry," "permit to carry," and "carry permit" appear zero times. There is also no county-sheriff layer: 24 V.S.A. § 2295 preempts every town, city, and incorporated village from regulating the carrying or licensing of firearms.
System	no-issue
Minimum age	18 — There is no permit, so there is no statutory "permit age." 18 is the practical floor for carrying a concealed handgun in public and it comes from federal law (18 U.S.C. § 922(x)), not from Vermont. Vermont's own floor is lower: 13 V.S.A. § 4008 bars a child under 16 from possessing a pistol or revolver "without the consent of his or her parents or guardian," and a violation is handled as a juvenile delinquency matter under 33 V.S.A. chapter 52, not as a crime. So Vermont state law by its own terms permits handgun possession at 16, and below 16 with parental consent — but federal law independently blocks under-18 handgun possession in most circumstances, so a 16- or 17-year-old carrying concealed in public would generally violate federal law even though Vermont law does not reach it. Separately, 13 V.S.A. § 4020 makes it an offense to SELL a firearm to a person under 21, with exceptions for law enforcement officers, active or veteran members of the Vermont National Guard, another state's National Guard, or the U.S. Armed Forces, and persons who produce a certificate of satisfactory completion of a Vermont hunter safety course or an equivalent hunter safety course approved by the Commissioner of Fish and Wildlife, including a course from another state or a province of Canada (§ 4020(b), (c)(3)). Note that § 4020 restricts the seller — it is a purchase restriction, not a possession or carry age.
Training required	No
State fee	Not published
Valid for	Not published
Processing time	Not applicable — no permit is issued, so there is no application to process.
Fingerprints	Not published
Non-resident permit	Not available

What it actually costs

The state fee is rarely the whole bill. Fingerprinting is usually charged by a private vendor, training is bought from an instructor, and several states add photographs, notarisation or other requirements on top.

State fee	$0
Realistic total	$0

Vermont has never issued a carry permit. There is no application to file, no fee to waive and no training requirement, because there is no license for a condition to attach to. The state certifies no carry instructors and publishes no curriculum. Vermont is the only state whose total is zero because nothing exists to buy, rather than because a state chose not to charge for what it issues — and it is why Vermont residents who want recognition in other states apply to Utah or Florida instead.

No fee. There is no permit, no application, and therefore nothing to pay. Reported as null rather than 0 because no application process exists at all, not because the fee happens to be waived.

How to apply

No application exists. Vermont issues no concealed carry permit or license of any kind, so there are no steps to complete. A non-prohibited adult may lawfully carry concealed immediately.
Because Vermont issues no permit, Vermont residents who wish to carry in other states have no Vermont credential to present. Residents who want out-of-state carry rights typically obtain a NON-RESIDENT permit from another state (commonly Utah, Florida, Arizona, or New Hampshire) and rely on that state's reciprocity network. That is a practical workaround, not Vermont law.

What disqualifies you

Convicted of a 'violent crime' as defined in 13 V.S.A. § 4017(d)(3) — prohibited from possessing a firearm (§ 4017(a)); penalty up to 2 years or $1,000, or both (§ 4017(b)). Section 4017(c) exempts a person who is exempt from federal firearms restrictions under 18 U.S.C. § 925(c)
Fugitive from justice — a person who has fled to avoid prosecution or to avoid giving testimony in a criminal proceeding (13 V.S.A. § 4017a(a)(1), (c)(2)); penalty up to 2 years or $1,000, or both (§ 4017a(b))
Subject of a final relief-from-abuse order issued under 15 V.S.A. § 1103 (13 V.S.A. § 4017a(a)(2))
Subject of a final order against stalking issued under 12 V.S.A. § 5133, if the order prohibits firearm possession (13 V.S.A. § 4017a(a)(3))
Pending charges for carrying a dangerous weapon while committing a felony (13 V.S.A. § 4005), for trafficking a regulated drug (18 V.S.A. ch. 84, subch. 1), or for human trafficking / aggravated human trafficking (13 V.S.A. §§ 2652, 2653) — 13 V.S.A. § 4017a(a)(4)
Subject of an Extreme Risk Protection Order (13 V.S.A. §§ 4051-4062), including a temporary ex parte order under § 4054. Relinquishment, storage and return procedures are in § 4059 and 20 V.S.A. § 2307, and were rewritten by 2025 Acts and Resolves No. 134 (Adj. Sess.) (H.606), effective July 1, 2026 — a change to procedure, not to who is prohibited
Anyone federally prohibited under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) — Vermont carry is still subject to federal disability
Child under 16 possessing a pistol or revolver without parental or guardian consent (13 V.S.A. § 4008; juvenile delinquency under 33 V.S.A. ch. 52, not a crime)
PLACE RESTRICTIONS — these apply to everyone, permit or not, and are the main criminal exposure for a lawful Vermont carrier: knowingly possessing a firearm within a school building or on a school bus (13 V.S.A. § 4004(a); first offense up to 1 year or $1,000, second or subsequent up to 3 years or $5,000); knowingly possessing a firearm on any school property with intent to injure another person (§ 4004(b); first offense up to 3 years or $1,000, second or subsequent up to 5 years or $5,000)
PLACE RESTRICTION — inside a courthouse without authorization from the court (13 V.S.A. § 4016(b); up to 1 year or $500). Note the asymmetry in the text: § 4016(b)(1) reaches a person who simply 'carries or has in his or her possession a firearm', with no knowledge element, while the 'knowingly' qualifier in § 4016(b)(2) applies only to non-firearm dangerous or deadly weapons. Notice of subsection (b) must be posted at each public entrance (§ 4016(c)), and no dangerous or deadly weapon at all is allowed in a courthouse certified by the Court Administrator as a secured building (§ 4016(d))
PLACE RESTRICTION — inside a hospital building, knowingly (13 V.S.A. § 4023; fine up to $250; notice must be posted at each public entrance)
PLACE RESTRICTION — at a polling place or on the walks leading to the building containing it on an election day, and at the town clerk's office during any period when a board of civil authority has voted to permit early voting, knowingly (13 V.S.A. § 4027, added by 2023 Acts and Resolves No. 120 (Adj. Sess.), § 4, eff. May 28, 2024; up to 1 year or $1,000). Exceptions for law enforcement, for officials authorized to carry as part of their official duties, and for a firearm stored in a motor vehicle (§ 4027(c)). The SAME act, at § 5, added a substantively identical prohibition at 17 V.S.A. § 2510 in the Elections title; § 2510 carries no penalty of its own, so the penalty is the one in 13 V.S.A. § 4027(b)
EQUIPMENT TRAP — 'large capacity ammunition feeding devices' are prohibited to manufacture, possess, transfer, offer for sale, purchase, receive or import (13 V.S.A. § 4021(a), (b); up to 1 year or $500). The threshold is more than 15 rounds for a hand gun or more than 10 rounds for a long gun, including any device that 'can be readily restored or converted to accept' that many (§ 4021(e)(1)). Devices lawfully possessed on or before the effective date of the section, April 11, 2018, are grandfathered (§ 4021(c)(1)), and a person who possessed a device by then may carry it out of Vermont and back in without that counting as an 'import' (§ 4021(a))
EQUIPMENT TRAP, EXCEPTIONS — three exclusions to 13 V.S.A. § 4021 matter in practice and are easy to miss. (1) A NON-RESIDENT may transport a large capacity device into Vermont 'for the exclusive purpose of use in an organized shooting competition sponsored by an entity registered with the Secretary of State' if the device is lawfully possessed under another state's law (§ 4021(d)(1)(F)). (2) The definition itself excludes an attached tubular device that accepts only .22 caliber rimfire ammunition, a device manufactured or sold solely for a lever action or bolt action long gun or an antique firearm, and a device manufactured or sold solely for a firearm that ATF has determined to be a curio or relic (§ 4021(e)(2)). (3) Further exemptions cover government, law enforcement (on or off duty), retired officers who received the device from their agency, and licensed manufacturers and importers (§ 4021(d)(1)(A)-(E))
EQUIPMENT TRAP — bump-fire stocks are prohibited to possess (13 V.S.A. § 4022; up to 1 year or $1,000)

Where to get the required training

Vermont does not publish a central list of certified instructors. Confirm directly with None — no Vermont agency issues a concealed carry permit or license. Verified two ways: (1) the Department of Public Safety / Vermont State Police licensing page enumerates every license and permit DPS issues — Assembly Permits, Precious Metal Dealer Licensing, Explosive License, Firearm Storage Program, and Scrap Metal Processor Obligations — and no firearm carry permit appears; (2) the full text of 13 V.S.A. chapter 85 (Weapons) contains no carry-licensing provision. The word "conceal" appears exactly once in the entire chapter, in § 4005 (carrying a weapon "openly or concealed" while committing a felony), and the strings "license to carry," "permit to carry," and "carry permit" appear zero times. There is also no county-sheriff layer: 24 V.S.A. § 2295 preempts every town, city, and incorporated village from regulating the carrying or licensing of firearms. that a course will be accepted before you pay for it.

Reciprocity

Carrying into Vermont

Vermont publishes no recognition list, because it does not need one: a non-prohibited adult may carry here without any permit, visitor or resident. Your home-state permit is neither required nor relevant while you are in Vermont.

6 jurisdictions honor a Vermont permit

Derived from what each of those states officially publishes.

Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Virginia

Full reciprocity matrix →

Building your own in Vermont

Build for personal use

Allowed

Serial number required

Yes

ALLOWED BUT SERIALIZATION IS MANDATORY — and this is recent law that post-dates most published guides. Vermont does not forbid an individual from building a firearm for personal use, but since February 28, 2025 the Vermont Ghost Guns Act makes the finished product unlawful unless it bears a serial number applied by a federal firearms licensee. The operative text, read verbatim from the statute on 15 September 2026, is 13 V.S.A. § 4083(c)(1): 'A person who manufactures a firearm or frame or receiver of a firearm, including by a three-dimensional printer, shall cause the firearm, frame, or receiver to be imprinted with a serial number by a federal firearms licensee pursuant to federal law or section 4084 of this title.' The only exceptions to § 4083(c) are a federally licensed firearms manufacturer acting within the scope of its license and possession or transfer for the purpose of having the item serialized (§ 4083(c)(2)). Three further points matter. First, § 4083(a)(1) separately bars knowingly POSSESSING an unfinished frame or receiver that has not been serialized by an FFL — so the 80% blank is itself regulated before you build anything, with exceptions for an FFL acting within its license, for possession or transfer for the purpose of getting the item serialized, and for law enforcement (§ 4083(a)(3)). Second, § 4083(b)(1) bars knowingly possessing ANY firearm, frame, or receiver not imprinted with an FFL-applied serial number; the exceptions in § 4083(b)(3) are an FFL acting within its license, possession or transfer for the purpose of serialization, an unserialized FRAME OR RECEIVER (not a complete firearm) transferred to or possessed by a law enforcement officer for legitimate law enforcement purposes, an antique firearm as defined in § 4017(d), a firearm rendered permanently inoperable, and a firearm manufactured before 1968. Third, serialization is not a private act: under § 4084(c), returning the serialized item to you 'constitutes a transfer that requires a background check of the transferee,' so the FFL must run a check under § 4019(c) before handing your own build back, and if the check is denied the FFL must deliver the item to a law enforcement agency, which gives the licensee a receipt on agency letterhead. The 72-hour waiting period does NOT apply to that return: 13 V.S.A. § 4019a(f) exempts 'the return of a firearm, frame, or receiver to a person by a licensed dealer after the dealer has serialized it ... if the dealer returns the firearm, frame, or receiver to the same person from whom it was received.' There is NO state registration of self-made firearms — the FFL keeps the record under § 4084(b)(2), including the date, name, age, and residence of the transferee and the serial number, but no filing is made with a Vermont agency, and § 4084(b)(3) provides that a licensee is not deemed a firearms manufacturer solely for serializing. The serial format is prescribed by § 4084(b)(1): the licensee's abbreviated FFL number (first three and last five digits) followed by a hyphen preceding a unique identification number, imprinted at the minimum size and depth required by federal law and not susceptible to being readily obliterated, altered, or removed. Penalties under § 4083(d): possession violations under (a)(1) or (b)(1) are a civil penalty of not more than $50 for a first offense, then up to 2 years / $1,000, then up to 3 years / $2,000; unlawful transfers and manufacturing without serialization ((a)(2), (b)(2), (c)(1)) start at up to 1 year / $500 and escalate to 2 years / $1,000 and 3 years / $2,000; using an unserialized firearm while committing a violent crime or reckless endangerment under § 1025 is up to 5 years / $5,000. Section 4084(d) separately penalizes a LICENSEE who violates the serialization or background-check duties: up to $2,500 for a first offense, then up to 1 year or $2,500, or both.

13 V.S.A. §§ 4081-4084 (Vermont Ghost Guns Act), added by 2023 Acts and Resolves No. 120 (Adj. Sess.), § 1, eff. February 28, 2025

Federal law, gunsmithing schools, and tools →

Statutes

What we could not confirm

PERMITSYSTEM ENUM CONFLICT — this is the flagged 'no-issue but permitless allowed' contradiction, and it reflects reality, not an error, so I kept it. Vermont genuinely breaks the enum's assumption. The schema offers only shall-issue / may-issue / no-issue, all three of which presuppose that a permit exists. Vermont issues no permit at all, so 'no-issue' is the literally correct value: Vermont does not issue. But 'no-issue' conventionally connotes a state that REFUSES permits and thereby bans ordinary concealed carry (historically DC or Illinois pre-2013). Vermont is the exact opposite: the least restrictive carry state in the country. DOWNSTREAM CONSUMERS MUST NOT RENDER 'no-issue' AS 'CONCEALED CARRY PROHIBITED' FOR VERMONT. If the schema can be extended, the correct value would be a fourth option such as 'no-permit-system' or 'permitless-only'. permitlessCarry.allowed = true is the authoritative field here and should win any display conflict.
sinceYear is null by design, not because I failed to find a date. Vermont never enacted a constitutional-carry or permitless-carry statute, because it never had a permit requirement to repeal — so there is no year to cite. The commonly repeated origin story is the Vermont Supreme Court's 1903 decision in State v. Rosenthal striking down a Rutland ordinance that required a permit to carry concealed. I did NOT verify that case from a primary source (the Vermont Judiciary does not publish 1903 opinions online), so I have deliberately omitted a reporter citation and have not relied on it for any field. Nothing in the answer depends on it.
Vermont publishes no official page that affirmatively states 'no permit is required to carry a concealed handgun.' My conclusion rests on negative evidence from primary sources rather than on an official affirmative statement: (a) the full text of 13 V.S.A. ch. 85, read on 15 September 2026, contains no carry-licensing provision — the strings 'license to carry', 'permit to carry', 'carry permit' and 'licensed to carry' each return zero hits in the complete 90,925-character chapter, and 'conceal' appears exactly once, in § 4005's felony provision; and (b) the DPS/VSP licensing page enumerates every license and permit DPS issues and no firearm carry permit is among them. This is strong but is inference from absence. I also tried the Vermont Attorney General's gun-laws page, which a search engine still indexes at https://ago.vermont.gov/attorney-generals-office-divisions-and-unit/criminal-division/gun-laws, but it now returns HTTP 403 'Access denied' and the AG's live Criminal Division page contains no firearms link at all, so no AG statement could be obtained.
THE STATUTE SITE IS ONE SESSION BEHIND, AND I WORKED AROUND IT RATHER THAN RELYING ON IT. Every Vermont Statutes Online page I read is stamped 'The Statutes below include the actions of the 2025 session of the General Assembly' — it does NOT yet incorporate the 2026 (adjourned) session. I confirmed this concretely: 13 V.S.A. § 4059's published history line ends at '(Added 2017, No. 97 (Adj. Sess.), § 1, eff. April 11, 2018.)' even though 2025 Acts and Resolves No. 134 (Adj. Sess.) rewrote that section effective July 1, 2026. So for any section this record relies on, the published text could in principle lag by one session. I closed that gap by reading the enrolled acts directly (see next entry) rather than trusting the codified text alone, and found nothing affecting this record. A reader checking Vermont Statutes Online after the 2026 session is folded in should expect § 4059 and 20 V.S.A. §§ 2307-2308 to change wording; nothing in this record should change with them.
The legislature's own per-code-section amendment index, 'Acts Affecting VSA Sections' (https://legislature.vermont.gov/bill/acts-affecting-statutes/2026), returned HTTP 500 Internal Server Error on every attempt, and the 2025 and 2024 variants returned 500 and 404, so the official per-section index was unavailable to me. I substituted an exhaustive equivalent: I downloaded the enrolled text of ALL 179 acts of the 2025-2026 biennium from https://legislature.vermont.gov/bill/acts/2026 and full-text searched every one for references to Title 13 chapter 85 and to 24 V.S.A. § 2295. Exactly two acts touch chapter 85: No. 64 (S.109, 'An act relating to miscellaneous judiciary procedures', eff. June 12, 2025), whose § 8 amended 13 V.S.A. § 4013 to delete the switchblade-knife offense and ordered expungements — a textbook case of a firearms amendment hiding inside a bill with no firearm word in its title; and No. 134 (H.606, eff. July 1, 2026), which rewrote ERPO relinquishment and storage procedure in § 4059 and 20 V.S.A. §§ 2307-2308. Neither creates a permit, changes who may carry, changes an age, or alters the serialization mandate. Separately, not one of the 179 acts contains the phrase 'permit to carry', 'license to carry', 'carry permit' or 'concealed carry'. This resolves the August pass's open item about an unswept 2025-2026 session.
reciprocity.honors is an empty array and is the single most misreadable field in this record. It means 'recognition is legally irrelevant in Vermont because no permit is required from anyone,' NOT 'Vermont recognizes no out-of-state permits.' Any renderer that prints 'Vermont honors permits from: none' would be actively misleading visitors. See reciprocity.notes.
The Vermont Ghost Guns Act (13 V.S.A. §§ 4081-4084) took effect on February 28, 2025 and is still too recent for most secondary guides to reflect. I have the statutory text verbatim, but I found no DPS or Attorney General implementation guidance, no published enforcement practice, and no case law interpreting it; the AG gun-laws page that might have carried such guidance returns HTTP 403. In particular, how § 4083(b)(1)'s broad ban on possessing any non-FFL-serialized firearm interacts with a firearm lawfully self-made in another state and then brought into Vermont is not addressed on the face of the statute — § 4083(b)(3) exempts antiques, permanently inoperable firearms and pre-1968 firearms, but nothing exempts a lawfully home-built out-of-state firearm, and I could not resolve the point from a primary source. A visitor or a person moving to Vermont with a self-made firearm should treat this as unsettled and adverse.
SITE CLAIM PARTIALLY VERIFIED — 'the only full constitutional-carry state that requires a serial number on a home-built firearm.' The Vermont half of this claim is confirmed verbatim and is not in doubt: 13 V.S.A. § 4083(c)(1) requires anyone who manufactures a firearm, frame or receiver, expressly including by three-dimensional printer, to have it serialized by a federal firearms licensee, and § 4083(b)(1) independently bars possessing any firearm lacking an FFL-applied serial number. The 'only' half is a fifty-state comparative assertion that I did not independently establish from fifty primary sources, and it is outside the scope of this one-jurisdiction record. No counterexample surfaced in the checking I did do: the states that came up as having unfinished-frame or self-manufacture serialization mandates were California, Massachusetts and Virginia, with Michigan pending, none of which is a permitless-carry state. Treat the comparative superlative as plausible but unaudited, and re-derive it by inverting the fifty-one records rather than asserting it inside the Vermont record.
fingerprintsRequired is null rather than false because the question does not apply — there is no permit and therefore no background process to attach fingerprints to. Note separately that fingerprints are not involved in Vermont firearm transfers either; 13 V.S.A. § 4019 uses a NICS check through a licensed dealer.
minAge is reported as 18 because that is the effective floor for lawfully carrying a concealed handgun in public, but that floor is supplied by federal law (18 U.S.C. § 922(x)), not by Vermont. Vermont's own statutory floor is 16 (13 V.S.A. § 4008). Consumers computing 'minimum age' from state law alone would get 16 and would be wrong about what is actually lawful in public.
I confirmed that no carry-licensing provision exists anywhere in the Vermont Statutes, not merely in chapter 85, using the legislature's own all-titles statute search: a search of all 33 titles for 'concealed' returns 74 sections and the only weapons provision among them is 13 V.S.A. § 4005, with zero hits in Title 20 (Internal Security and Public Safety); and a Title 20 search for 'firearm' returns only the unlawful-firearm disposition and storage chapter (20 V.S.A. §§ 2301-2307), the explosives chapter, and the Governor's emergency powers. The residual caveat is that this search engine matches loosely on individual words rather than on exact phrases, so it is a strong but not airtight sweep.