Texas Concealed Carry Permit

Texas has no statute prohibiting an eligible person from building or assembling a firearm for personal use, and no state serial-number, marking, or registration requirement for a self-made firearm. A full-text review of the current Texas Penal Code ch. 46 (Weapons) turns up no occurrence of "serial," no unfinished-frame/receiver provision, and no state firearms registry provision. The only manufacturing prohibition is § 46.05, which makes it an offense to intentionally or knowingly possess, MANUFACTURE, transport, repair, or sell an explosive weapon, machine gun, short-barrel firearm, armor-piercing ammunition, a chemical dispensing device, a zip gun, a tire deflation device, or an improvised explosive device — unless the item is registered in the federal National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record or is otherwise not subject to that requirement. (H.B. 957, 87th Leg., 2021, repealed the firearm-silencer entry from § 46.05, so suppressors are no longer a Texas prohibited weapon.) Building a machine gun or short-barrel firearm at home therefore remains a Texas felony absent NFA registration. FEDERAL law applies independently regardless of Texas law: the National Firearms Act, 18 U.S.C. § 922(o) (machine guns), § 922(p) (undetectable firearms), § 922(r), the prohibition on manufacturing for sale without an FFL, and ATF's frame/receiver rule. Texas also broadly preempts local firearm regulation (Tex. Local Gov't Code § 229.001), so cities and counties may not impose their own serialization or registration rules.

Tex. Penal Code ch. 46 (esp. § 46.05, Prohibited Weapons); no Texas serialization or registration statute

Federal law, gunsmithing schools, and tools →

What we could not confirm

• RECIPROCITY CONFLICT (most important caveat): Texas's controlling statute and its own agency chart disagree. Tex. Gov't Code § 411.173(b), as amended by S.B. 706 (eff. 9/1/2025), says flatly that "A valid license to carry a handgun issued by any other state is recognized in this state," and S.B. 706 repealed the proclamation/agreement subsections (c) and (d). But the DPS "State Reciprocity Information" page still displays the pre-2025 chart, including entries stating that Minnesota and Wisconsin license holders "will not be allowed to carry in Texas" and that Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, Vermont, D.C. and the territories have "No Agreement." I resolved this in favor of the statute (a statute controls over a stale agency web page), but I found no DPS page or press release affirmatively confirming the post-S.B. 706 universal-recognition posture. Anyone relying on an out-of-state license in Texas — especially an 18-20 year old, for whom permitless carry is unavailable — should confirm with DPS directly.
• Whether recognition under § 411.173(b) extends to licenses issued by U.S. territories (PR, GU, VI, MP, AS) is my inference from the Code Construction Act definition of "State" (§ 311.005(7)), not from any Texas source naming those jurisdictions. Territories are therefore excluded from the honors array.
• Vermont is excluded from the honors array because Vermont issues no concealed-carry license at all, not because Texas declines to recognize one. That is my characterization, not a Texas statement.
• minAge is reported as 18 based on DPS's currently published Eligibility FAQ describing the Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc. v. McCraw injunction (N.D. Tex., No. 4:21-cv-1245-P). The statutory text of § 411.172(a)(2) still reads 21 and has not been amended. I did not independently verify the current appellate or procedural status of that injunction — only that DPS still publishes the non-enforcement statement as of today. If the injunction were lifted, the answer would revert to 21 except for the § 411.172(g) military and § 411.172(i) protective-order pathways. Permitless carry unambiguously requires 21 either way.
• The live statutes.capitol.texas.gov site is now a JavaScript single-page application that serves no statute text to non-browser clients, so verbatim statutory text was read from Internet Archive captures of the official pages (Penal Code ch. 46 captured 2025-10-12; Gov't Code ch. 411 captured 2025-12-18; Gov't Code ch. 311 captured 2025-09-21). All three post-date the 89th Legislature's September 1, 2025 effective dates and the next Texas regular session is not until 2027, so no intervening amendment is expected — but I could not read the live 2026 text directly to confirm.
• Several DPS pages (the reciprocity chart, instructors page, and multiple FAQs) display stale "last reviewed" dates of September 2020 while containing newer content, so page dates are not a reliable currency signal for any DPS page.
• validityYears is given as 4 because that is the initial term, but § 411.183 is more precise: an initial license expires on the holder's first birthday occurring after the fourth anniversary of issuance (so 4-5 years in practice), and a renewed license expires on the holder's birthday five years after the previous license expired. Licenses of non-citizens may expire earlier with lawful presence, and protective-order-designated licenses expire at the holder's 22nd birthday or when the order ends.
• Fingerprints are required for original applications; renewals normally reuse prints on file, so a renewal applicant may not need new prints. The FAST/IdentoGO fingerprint vendor fee is not published on the DPS fee table and is not included in the fee figures.
• For home manufacture I verified the absence of a Texas serialization or registration requirement by full-text search of Penal Code ch. 46 only. I did not exhaustively search every other Texas code for a self-manufactured-firearm provision, though Texas's strong preemption posture and the absence of any such provision in the weapons chapter make one very unlikely. Federal requirements (NFA, 18 U.S.C. § 922(o)/(p)/(r), manufacturing-for-sale licensing, ATF's frame/receiver rule) are unaffected by Texas law and were not researched here.