Arkansas Concealed Carry Permit

Arkansas has NO state statute prohibiting an individual from making a firearm for personal use, NO state serialization or marking requirement for a self-made firearm, and NO state firearm registry. Arkansas's serial-number statutes run the other direction — they punish REMOVING a mark that already exists, not failing to apply one. § 5-73-106(a): 'A person commits the offense of defacing a firearm if he or she knowingly removes, defaces, mars, covers, alters, or destroys the manufacturer's serial number or identification mark of a firearm' (Class D felony). § 5-73-107(a) makes it an offense to knowingly possess 'a firearm with a manufacturer's serial number or other identification mark required by law that has been removed, defaced, marred, altered, or destroyed' (Class D felony; Class A misdemeanor in specified circumstances), with an express exception for firearms manufactured before January 1, 1968. Both provisions are keyed to a 'manufacturer's serial number' or a mark 'required by law' — a firearm made by a non-licensee for personal use has neither, so neither statute is triggered by an unserialized homemade gun. Arkansas's only registration-style firearms provisions are the separate machine gun registry (§§ 5-73-207 through 5-73-209), which is a manufacturer/dealer recordkeeping regime, not a homebuilder requirement. FEDERAL LAW STILL CONTROLS AND IS THE REAL CONSTRAINT: (a) making an NFA item (short-barreled rifle/shotgun, suppressor, machine gun, AOW) requires an approved ATF Form 1 and payment of the making tax before manufacture — § 5-73-104's prohibited-weapons list also reaches such items, and 18 U.S.C. § 922(o) bars new machine guns outright; (b) 18 U.S.C. § 922(p) bars undetectable firearms; (c) a person may not make a firearm if they are a prohibited person; (d) building with intent to sell or distribute requires an FFL under 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(1)(A) and triggers marking duties under § 923(i); (e) ATF Final Rule 2021R-05F (2022) redefined 'frame or receiver' and reached certain parts kits, and the Supreme Court upheld the rule against facial challenge in Bondi v. VanDerStok (2025), so a kit that qualifies as a 'firearm' must be transferred through an FFL and comes serialized. Building an unserialized firearm for yourself remains lawful under both Arkansas and federal law; SELLING it later is where liability attaches. I found no Arkansas act in the 2023 or 2025 regular sessions addressing privately made firearms, unfinished frames or receivers, or 3D-printed firearms.

Ark. Code Ann. §§ 5-73-106 (Defacing a firearm) and 5-73-107 (Possession of a defaced firearm); see also § 5-73-104 (prohibited weapons) and § 5-73-105 (legitimate manufacture, repair, and transportation)

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What we could not confirm

• DC AND U.S. TERRITORIES: Ark. Code Ann. § 5-73-321 recognizes a license 'issued to the person by another state.' Neither the statute nor any Arkansas State Police publication I could find states whether the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, or American Samoa qualify as a 'state.' I deliberately excluded DC and all territories from reciprocity.honors rather than guess. A DC or territorial licensee in Arkansas is in practice protected by Arkansas's own permitless carry (§ 5-73-329) unless they are in a prohibited place, but the recognition question itself is unresolved.
• VERMONT: excluded from reciprocity.honors because Vermont issues no concealed carry permit at all, so there is no Vermont license for Arkansas to recognize. This is an artifact of Vermont's system, not an Arkansas exclusion. If the downstream consumer expects a literal all-50 list under blanket recognition, VT should be re-added with that caveat.
• 2024 REORGANIZATION BILL: The Arkansas General Assembly's October 2024 Firearms and Concealed Carry Laws Study final report contains a full draft bill creating a new subchapter '5-73-501 et seq. — Carrying a Concealed Handgun Without a License' (proposed § 5-73-503 would expressly allow any non-minor not otherwise prohibited to carry openly or concealed without a license). I could NOT confirm on arkleg.state.ar.us whether that bill was enacted in the 2025 regular session. Evidence it was not: the ASP still publishes only the August 3, 2023 code compilation, and the Attorney General was still issuing opinions in November 2025 parsing the existing patchwork of §§ 5-73-122 and 5-73-306. If it did pass, the substance of permitless carry is unchanged but the citation would move from § 5-73-329 to the new subchapter. Verify before publishing statute cites.
• NOVEMBER 14, 2025 AG OPINION: multiple news outlets report an eight-page Arkansas AG opinion authored by Assistant AG Justin Hughes at the request of Rep. Sonia Eubanks Barker, holding that open carry is not prohibited in municipal parks or at athletic events, that concealed carry IS prohibited at athletic events, and that both open and concealed carry are prohibited in municipal buildings absent an enhanced endorsement. I could not retrieve the opinion itself from arkansasag.gov and therefore do not have its opinion number or exact language. Do not quote it. AG opinions are advisory and not binding on courts.
• MAY 2026 LITTLE ROCK RULING: news reports describe a circuit court ruling that Little Rock's concealed handgun ban on city property violates Arkansas state law (preemption). I did not retrieve the opinion and do not know whether it is final or on appeal. This affects where you may carry, not whether a permit is required.
• 2025 ACT 596 amended the definition of 'restaurant' in the prohibited-places statute (§ 5-73-306). The ASP's published code compilation predates this and does not reflect it, so the prohibited-places text in that PDF is slightly stale. I did not retrieve Act 596 itself.
• PERMITLESS CARRY AGE OF 18: this is my reading of §§ 5-73-119(a)(1) and 5-73-120 — no Arkansas statute sets a 21-year floor for carrying without a license. Nearly every commercial permit-aggregator site asserts 21 (or 21 with an 18 military exception). I found no statutory basis for their figure and no official Arkansas agency page that states a permitless-carry age either way. Arkansas State Police publishes no guidance on the permitless-carry age because ASP administers only the license. Treat 18 as statute-derived but not agency-confirmed, and note that federal law separately blocks 18-20 year olds from buying a handgun at a dealer.
• FINGERPRINT VENDOR COST: § 5-73-311(a)(3)(C) puts Live Scan processing costs on the applicant. The amount is set by the individual Live Scan operator, not by ASP, and is not published as a single figure. It is separate from the $90.61 online portal total, which ASP describes as covering 'application and background check.' The exact boundary between the portal's background-check component and the vendor's Live Scan charge is not documented.
• SHALL-ISSUE CLASSIFICATION: § 5-73-309 is mandatory ('shall issue' if criteria met), but § 5-73-308(a)(1) and (b)(1) give the Director discretionary authority to deny for recent misdemeanor violence, a recent carrying-a-weapon conviction, an active criminal investigation, or a sheriff's/police chief's dangerousness affidavit. Arkansas is properly classified shall-issue, but it is not purely ministerial. Denials are appealable under the Arkansas Administrative Procedure Act.
• NON-RESIDENT PERMIT: set to false based on the 90-day residency requirement in § 5-73-309(2)(A). The only paths for a non-resident are (a) active-duty military stationed in Arkansas and their spouses, who are exempt from the residency requirement, and (b) § 5-73-319 transfer, which requires that the person has BECOME an Arkansas resident. No general non-resident CHCL exists. I did not find an ASP page stating this in so many words; it is inferred from the statute.
• ACTUAL ISSUANCE TIME: the 120-day figure is the statutory ceiling (§ 5-73-308(b)(2)) and the ASP page repeats 'up to four months.' ASP publishes no median or typical processing time, so the real-world wait is unknown.