Ohio Concealed Carry Permit

Ohio law affirmatively protects private manufacture and imposes no state serialization or registration requirement on a self-made firearm. ORC 9.68(A) (firearms preemption) states that, except as specifically provided by the U.S. or Ohio Constitution or state or federal law, "a person, without further license, permission, restriction, delay, or process ... may own, possess, purchase, acquire, transport, store, carry, sell, transfer, MANUFACTURE, or keep any firearm, part of a firearm, its components, and its ammunition" — and the same section forecloses any local ordinance, rule, or resolution to the contrary. There is no Ohio statute requiring a serial number on, or registration of, a privately made firearm. Ohio's serial-number statute, ORC 2923.201 (possessing a defaced firearm), only punishes changing, altering, removing, or obliterating a manufacturer's identification mark, and possessing a firearm known to be so defaced; it expressly provides that division (A) "does not apply to any firearm on which no manufacturer's serial number was inscribed at the time of its manufacture" — so a never-serialized homemade gun is not a defaced firearm. TWO REAL LIMITS. (1) ZIP-GUN / DANGEROUS ORDNANCE, A FELONY: ORC 2923.11(G)(1) defines a "zip-gun" to include "any firearm of crude and extemporized manufacture," and also any non-firearm device (e.g., a starter's pistol) specially adapted for use as a firearm, and any industrial/signalling/safety tool capable of use as a firearm when possessed, carried, or used as one. ORC 2923.11(K)(1) classifies a zip-gun as "dangerous ordnance," and ORC 2923.17(A) makes it an offense to knowingly acquire, have, carry, or use dangerous ordnance — unlawful possession of dangerous ordnance is a felony of the fifth degree. A cleanly built firearm made from a commercial receiver blank or from quality parts is generally not "of crude and extemporized manufacture," but the line is fact-specific and prosecutors have charged crude builds. A homemade suppressor is separately dangerous ordnance under ORC 2923.11(K)(5). Note also that a concealed handgun that is a "restricted firearm" (i.e., dangerous ordnance) may never be carried under ORC 2923.111. (2) FEDERAL LAW STILL APPLIES: ORC 9.68 is expressly subject to federal law. Under federal law a non-prohibited person may build a firearm for personal use without a license, but may not manufacture for sale or distribution without an FFL, may not build an NFA item without prior ATF approval, and — under ATF Final Rule 2021R-05F (effective Aug. 24, 2022) — a privately made firearm must be serialized by a licensee before any transfer, and before a gunsmith/dealer may take it into inventory.

Ohio Rev. Code § 9.68(A); see also §§ 2923.11(G) & (K)(1), 2923.17(A), 2923.201

Federal law, gunsmithing schools, and tools →

What we could not confirm

• DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA AND U.S. TERRITORIES: I included DC in reciprocity.honors, but this is an inference, not a confirmed official statement. ORC 109.69(D)(2) defines "license-issuing state" as "a state other than this state that, pursuant to law, provides for the issuance of a license to carry a concealed handgun." Neither the statute nor the AG's page says whether DC, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, or American Samoa count as a "state." I omitted the territories entirely for that reason. In practice the question is nearly academic: any non-prohibited person 21+ may carry concealed in Ohio permitlessly under ORC 2923.111 regardless of what permit they hold. A DC or territorial licensee should not rely on permit recognition per se.
• VERMONT: omitted from reciprocity.honors because Vermont issues no concealed carry license, so there is no Vermont permit for Ohio to recognize. This is a description of Vermont's system, not of an Ohio exclusion — Ohio's rule is categorical.
• AG RECIPROCITY MAP NOT MACHINE-READABLE FOR THE INBOUND DIRECTION: the state list on the AG's reciprocity page is rendered from an embedded JavaScript object and describes only the OUTBOUND direction (states that honor an Ohio CHL). The AG publishes no explicit inbound list, because ORC 109.69(B)(3) makes one unnecessary. My honors list is therefore derived from the statutory text plus the AG's own prose statement that Ohio recognizes any non-resident's valid out-of-state CHL, not from an enumerated official list.
• AG CCW MANUAL EDITION DATE: the manual currently posted at the AG's CCWManual link is the June 2022 edition. It postdates SB 215 and correctly describes permitless carry, but it predates SB 288/HB 281 (which took effect April 6, 2023 and amended ORC 2923.125). Where the manual and the current ORC text could differ, I used the current statutory text from codes.ohio.gov.
• FEE FOR SHORT-TERM RESIDENTS: ORC 2923.125 sets the surcharge as "the actual cost of having a background check performed by the federal bureau of investigation" rather than a fixed dollar figure. I did not find an official current dollar amount for that FBI cost, so fees.initial reflects only the statutory $67 base.
• PROCESSING TIME: 45 days is the statutory ceiling in ORC 2923.125(D)(1). Actual per-county turnaround is set by each of Ohio's 88 sheriffs and I did not verify any county's real-world timeline against an official source.
• HOME MANUFACTURE / "CRUDE AND EXTEMPORIZED": ORC 2923.11(G)(1) makes "any firearm of crude and extemporized manufacture" a zip-gun and therefore dangerous ordnance, a fifth-degree felony to possess under ORC 2923.17(A). I could not locate a controlling Ohio Supreme Court definition of where "crude and extemporized" ends and a lawful home build begins. My conclusion that a well-made privately manufactured firearm (e.g., a finished 80% receiver build) falls outside that definition is a reading of the text, not a confirmed holding. Anyone building a firearm in Ohio should treat build quality as legally material and consult counsel.
• NO STATE SERIALIZATION MANDATE: I verified this by reading ORC 9.68, 2923.201, and the Chapter 2923 section index and finding no serialization or registration requirement for privately made firearms. This is a negative finding — proving absence — and I cannot rule out a provision elsewhere in the Revised Code or in a 2025-2026 enactment that I did not review. Note that federal ATF Rule 2021R-05F still requires serialization before transfer.
• WEB SEARCH UNAVAILABLE: this session's web-search budget was exhausted before I began, so I could not search for recent legislation. I navigated directly to the official Ohio AG and codes.ohio.gov pages instead. All statute pages I read display their own effective dates (ORC 2923.111 eff. 6/13/2022; ORC 2923.125 eff. 4/6/2023; ORC 109.69 eff. 3/23/2015), and codes.ohio.gov is the Legislative Service Commission's live text, so the values above reflect the code as currently published. I could not independently scan for pending or very recently effective 2026 bills.