What the law actually says,
with the citations.

You must be twenty-one. All firearms.

Twenty-one to buy any firearm from a Florida dealer — handgun, rifle or shotgun. People assume eighteen is fine for a long gun because that is the federal rule. In Florida it is not.

The Eleventh Circuit upheld the rule sitting en banc in March 2025 and the Supreme Court declined to review it on 30 June 2026. Narrow exceptions exist for law enforcement officers, correctional officers and servicemembers, covering rifles and shotguns only.

Note the awkward part: a Florida court held in June 2026 that eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds may obtain a concealed weapon licence. Being able to carry does not make you able to buy. Two different statutes, and only one of them moved.

The waiting period — unsettled, ask us on the day

Florida's three-day waiting period sits in both the state constitution and § 790.0655. In June 2026 the Attorney General accepted a judgment conceding that it violates the Second Amendment and agreed to stop enforcing it.

That is an enforcement position arising from litigation, not a repeal — the text is still printed in the statute book, and positions of this sort can move. We are not going to tell you on a webpage what your collection timeline will be. Ring us the week you are buying and we will tell you where it actually stands.

Carry: permitless since 2023, open since a 2025 decision

Florida has permitted concealed carry without a licence since 1 July 2023, but only for people who would qualify for the licence. If something in your history would disqualify you from holding one, it disqualifies you from carrying without one too.

On open carry: the First District Court of Appeal held the ban unconstitutional in September 2025 and the Attorney General issued guidance days later directing that law-abiding people carrying visibly should not be arrested or prosecuted. The statute has not been repealed and the Legislature codified nothing in the 2026 session. Location restrictions and private property rights are entirely unaffected — a business can still tell you no.

A concealed licence is still worth having

Chiefly for reciprocity — permitless carry stops at the state line, and a Florida licence is what other states recognise. It also matters for the waiting-period exemption written into the statute.

What it will not do is skip your background check at our counter. ATF's permit chart does not treat the Florida licence as a qualifying alternative to a NICS check, so licence holders go through the full FDLE check exactly like everybody else. If a shop told you otherwise, they were wrong.

Bringing identification: the address catches people

You need a valid, unexpired government photo ID showing your name, date of birth, photograph and current residence address. A Florida driver licence normally does it.

If the address on your licence is out of date, federal regulation requires a supplemental government-issued document showing where you actually live — a vehicle registration, a tax bill, a voter ID card. A utility bill, a lease or a bank statement will not do, and we cannot make an exception for you however reasonable it seems.

Buyers from out of state

A rifle or shotgun over the counter: yes, provided the sale is lawful both in your state and in ours. Florida's twenty-one-and-over rule still binds us regardless of where you live.

A handgun: no. Federal law requires the transfer to pass through a dealer in your own state of residence. We will ship it to a licensee near you and you will complete the paperwork there.

Private sales between Florida residents

Florida does not require a background check for a private, non-dealer sale between residents — but you may not knowingly sell to a prohibited person, and the statute setting the minimum purchase age at twenty-one is written as a prohibition on the buyer, not only on dealers. Broward County has its own ordinance covering sales on premises open to the public, which is where gun shows and flea markets come in.

Bring it to us instead. Thirty-five dollars buys both of you a documented transfer and a background check, and it removes any argument about what you did or did not know about the person on the other side of it.

What the state check actually is

Florida is a point-of-contact state. Your check goes to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which searches state records as well as the federal systems — so a Florida result can differ from a plain NICS result. FDLE operates 363 days a year from nine in the morning until nine at night, and reports that 96 per cent of transactions are approved and 98 per cent resolve within minutes.

If yours returns non-approved, that is not the end of it. There is a formal appeal, it must be filed within sixty days, and it requires fingerprints rolled by a law enforcement agency. We will show you how to begin it rather than shrugging.