South Dakota Concealed Carry Permit

South Dakota state law does not prohibit an individual from building or assembling a firearm for personal use, and imposes NO state serialization, marking, or registration requirement on a self-made firearm. This conclusion rests on the absence of any prohibition rather than on an affirmative authorizing statute: a full scan of SDCL ch. 22-14 (Unlawful Use of Weapons) and ch. 23-7 (Firearms Control) found no provision addressing privately made, homemade, 3D-printed, or unserialized firearms, and no manufacturing licence requirement for personal (non-commercial) making. The only serial-number offense is SDCL 22-14-5: "Any person who possesses any firearm on which the MANUFACTURER'S serial number has been changed, altered, removed, or obliterated is guilty of a Class 6 felony" (exception for a person who has applied for a new number under SDCL 23-7-43, under which the DCI director will engrave or stamp a new serial number on request). By its terms that statute reaches the defacement of an existing manufacturer's serial number, not the absence of a serial number on a firearm that was never commercially manufactured. There is also no state firearms registry - SDCL 23-7-8.6 bars any state agency or political subdivision from keeping "any list, record, or registry of privately owned firearms" or of their owners. Local governments are preempted from restricting the "manufacture" of firearms (SDCL 7-18A-36, 8-5-13, 9-19-20). IMPORTANT LIMITS: (1) Making an NFA-type "controlled weapon" is a Class 6 felony under SDCL 22-14-6 unless the maker "has a federal license issued pursuant to law for the weapon or has registered the weapon with the proper federal authority pursuant to law" - so a home-built machine gun or short shotgun without federal approval (ATF Form 1) is a South Dakota felony. As amended by SL 2026, ch 96, SDCL 22-1-2(8) now defines "controlled weapon" as "a machine gun and short shotgun, but does not include a firearm silencer," so firearm silencers are no longer a controlled weapon under South Dakota law (federal NFA requirements are unaffected). (2) Independent federal law still governs: an unlicensed person may generally make a firearm for personal use but not for sale or distribution, the Undetectable Firearms Act applies, and NFA making requires prior ATF approval.

SDCL 22-14-5; SDCL 23-7-43; SDCL 22-14-6; SDCL 22-1-2(8), (17); SDCL 23-7-8.6; SDCL 7-18A-36, 8-5-13, 9-19-20

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What we could not confirm

• Whether an Enhanced or Gold Card applicant pays any out-of-pocket amount for the FBI/DCI fingerprint criminal background check. SDCL 23-7-53 directs the sheriff to forward "the payment for the criminal background check" to the Division of Criminal Investigation but does not say who supplies it or how much; no amount appears anywhere in ch. 23-7, and neither the SOS Permit Types page nor the July 2026 Firearm Handbook lists any applicant fee. SDCL 23-7-72's county reimbursement schedule ($50 initial enhanced, $30 initial gold card) strongly implies the state absorbs it, and SDCL 23-7-53(3) bars a charge when the sheriff takes the prints - but this was not confirmed by an explicit official statement that the applicant pays $0. Individual sheriffs might charge for fingerprinting done outside the sheriff's office. Verify with your county sheriff.
• The cost of the private qualifying handgun course required for the Enhanced permit is set by the individual NRA-certified instructor and is not fixed by statute or published by the state.
• Whether South Dakota recognizes carry licenses issued by the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, or other U.S. territories. The SOS FAQ says "all other U.S. states" and the Firearm Handbook says "the state of its issue"; neither addresses non-state jurisdictions. Only the 49 other states are listed in reciprocity.honors. In practice this is moot, since non-residents may carry concealed in South Dakota without any permit.
• No published official list enumerates the inbound-recognized states one by one - recognition is stated categorically in the SOS Firearm Handbook and FAQ. The enumerated list here was derived from that categorical language, not from a state-by-state official table. (The state's only state-by-state table, the reciprocity grid PDF, covers the opposite direction.)
• SDCL 23-7-70 (enacted by SL 2019, ch 113, § 14) was repealed by SL 2025, ch 36, § 5. The repealed text was not retrievable, so what that section had covered could not be confirmed; it does not affect the permitless-carry conclusion, which rests on SDCL 23-7-7 and the repeal of SDCL 22-14-9.
• On home manufacture, no South Dakota statute affirmatively authorizes or expressly addresses building a firearm for personal use, or privately made / unserialized / 3D-printed firearms. The 'allowed, no serial required' conclusion is inferred from the absence of any prohibition after a full scan of SDCL ch. 22-14 and ch. 23-7, plus the narrow wording of SDCL 22-14-5 (which reaches only alteration of a MANUFACTURER'S serial number). It has not been confirmed by an official state interpretation or Attorney General opinion, and a court could read SDCL 22-14-5 more broadly. Independent federal law (NFA, Undetectable Firearms Act, prohibition on making for sale without a licence) applies regardless.
• SDCL 23-7-8.13 (60-day renewal grace period, cited in the July 2026 Firearm Handbook) was not independently retrieved from the statute database and its exact current text was not verified.
• The SOS FAQ #17 says it is "ultimately up to the sheriff's office whether or not they should issue you a concealed carry permit," which sits in tension with the mandatory language of SDCL 23-7-7 ("must be issued to any applicant") and 23-7-7.1 ("shall be issued... within five days"). Classified as shall-issue based on the statutory text, with denials appealable under SDCL 23-7-7.1.