Oregon Concealed Carry Permit

Oregon has no statute that criminalizes the act of building a firearm for personal use as such, but HB 2005 (2021) made it effectively impossible to build and keep an unserialized one. ORS 166.266(1): 'A person may not knowingly possess, offer for sale, sell or transfer a firearm unless the firearm has been imprinted with a serial number by a federally licensed firearm manufacturer, importer or dealer, or a gunsmith with a federal firearms license, in accordance with federal law.' Critically, a private builder may NOT self-apply a serial number -- the imprinting must be done by an FFL. Exceptions in ORS 166.266(2): antique firearms; firearms manufactured before October 22, 1968; firearms rendered permanently inoperable; transactions by or possession by a person licensed under 18 U.S.C. 923; and a gunsmith taking possession solely to imprint the serial number. Penalties escalate under ORS 166.266(3): Class B violation for a first offense, Class A misdemeanor with one prior conviction under ORS 166.265/166.266/166.267, Class B felony with two or more priors. ORS 166.267 separately bars importing, selling or transferring an unfinished frame or receiver unless the person is an FFL dealer and the manufacturer's name and an individual serial number are conspicuously placed on it, and bars knowing POSSESSION of an unserialized unfinished frame or receiver except by a federally licensed manufacturer where it is an unfinished part within a serializing manufacturing process -- so the 80% receiver supply chain is closed. ORS 166.265 makes manufacturing, importing, offering, selling or transferring an undetectable firearm a Class B felony and possession a Class A misdemeanor (Class B felony with a prior), with forfeiture. Bottom line: you may assemble a firearm for personal use, but to possess it lawfully it must bear a serial number imprinted by an FFL manufacturer, importer, dealer or FFL gunsmith. There is no state firearm registration and no requirement to register a self-made firearm with any Oregon agency -- the requirement is serialization, not registration.

ORS 166.266; ORS 166.267; ORS 166.265

Federal law, gunsmithing schools, and tools →

What we could not confirm

• FEE STATUTE NOT READ VERBATIM. The oregonlegislature.gov ORS chapter 166 page is very long and the fetch tool truncated it partway through ORS 166.291(1), so I could never read ORS 166.291's fee subsection or ORS 166.292's term subsection in the original. One attempted extraction returned what appeared to be a paraphrase ('$50 application fee' plus '$100 license fee for a four-year license') that conflicts with every county schedule I found, so I discarded it. The $115 new / $75 renewal figures come from two independent county sheriff fee schedules (Lane and Washington) that agree exactly, plus the legislature's own SB 554 summary confirming a fee increase. Josephine County still publishes the older $65/$50. Treat the fee as county-verified, not statute-verified, and check your own county.
• The 4-year validity period and the 45-day sheriff review window are sourced from county sheriff pages citing ORS 166.292 (Lane County quotes the 45-day figure and states '4 years from date of issue'; Washington County states 'valid for four years from date of issue'). I did not read ORS 166.292's text verbatim due to the same truncation.
• Three disqualifiers -- active restraining order, registered sex offender status, and dishonorable military discharge -- appear on the Washington County Sheriff's published eligibility list. They are almost certainly ORS 166.291(1)(m)-(o), but the statute text was truncated before those paragraphs, so I could not confirm the exact subsection letters or wording.
• BALLOT MEASURE 114 STATUS UNRESOLVED. SB 243 (2025) delayed Measure 114 implementation to March 15, 2026 -- a date now past. Measure 114 would impose a permit-to-purchase requirement (with its own live-fire training component, distinct from the CHL) and a magazine capacity limit. I could not determine whether it is now operative, still enjoined, or in litigation: the Oregon State Police FICS page makes no mention of Measure 114 or any permit-to-purchase program, and I had no web-search budget left to check court dockets. This affects ACQUIRING a firearm, not carrying one, so it does not change any carry field above -- but anyone buying a handgun in Oregon should verify current status with OSP directly.
• No statewide application URL exists. Oregon has 36 county sheriffs, each with its own page, portal (several use the third-party Permitium system), appointment process and payment rules. The officialApplicationUrl field points to the Oregon State Police page that directs applicants to their county sheriff, because there is no better statewide target.
• instructorRegistryUrl is null because Oregon publishes no state-certified CHL instructor list. ORS 166.291(1)(f) defers to NRA certification or law-enforcement-agency certification rather than a state credential. Sheriffs may individually accept or reject specific providers (Josephine County rejects American Firearms Training certificates; Lane County names OSSA courses as acceptable), so acceptance is county-by-county with no central registry.
• SB 243 (2025) took effect 91 days after sine die and lets cities, counties and special districts strip the CHL affirmative defense for public buildings used for official meetings, making carry there a Class A misdemeanor. I could not enumerate which local governments have actually adopted such ordinances. CHL holders should check each jurisdiction.
• Nonresident CHLs: ORS 166.291(2) permits residents of states contiguous to Oregon (WA, ID, NV, CA) to apply, and Washington County confirms this requires 'a compelling business interest or other legitimate demonstrated need' tied to that county. Practice varies sharply -- Lane County refuses all out-of-state applicants because it borders no other state, and Josephine County has suspended new out-of-state applications entirely. I could not survey all border counties.
• Open carry is governed by a patchwork of local ordinances (Portland, Multnomah County, Salem, Beaverton, Tigard, Oregon City, Independence are commonly cited as restricting loaded firearms in public, with CHL holders exempt). I did not verify each ordinance against the municipality's own code in this pass.
• On home manufacture, no Oregon statute expressly says 'you may build a firearm for personal use.' I set selfManufactureAllowed to true because no provision criminalizes the act itself -- the prohibition in ORS 166.266 attaches to POSSESSION of an unserialized firearm. This is an inference from the absence of a prohibition, not from affirmative statutory permission.