Attorney Ryan Mergl co-authored the National Business Institute's Concealed Carry Law course materials that other Pennsylvania lawyers study. Here's the plain-English version.
Few areas of Pennsylvania law generate more confusion — and more accidental felonies — than carrying a concealed firearm. Attorney Mergl wrote the permitting, background check, and police-interaction chapters of NBI's Concealed Carry Law (Pennsylvania edition) and Carrying Concealed Firearms in Pennsylvania, the continuing legal education materials attorneys use to learn this area. What follows is the framework every PA gun owner should understand.
A Pennsylvania License to Carry Firearms (LTCF) covers carrying a firearm concealed on your person or in a vehicle anywhere in the Commonwealth. You do not need a license to carry at home or at your fixed place of business. Outside those places, carrying concealed without a valid license is a felony of the third degree — or a first-degree misdemeanor if you were otherwise eligible for a license and committed no other violation. That gap between "felony" and "misdemeanor" is where defense lawyering lives.
Pennsylvania is a "shall-issue" state: the sheriff must issue the license unless the applicant is disqualified. You apply at age 21 or older, using the State Police form, to the sheriff of your county (in Philadelphia, the chief of police). The license runs five years. No training course is required, and an LTCF is not a license to purchase — buying a firearm still requires its own background check. The sheriff has 45 days to investigate, including a background check through the Pennsylvania Instant Check System (PICS).
Pennsylvania's Uniform Firearms Act lists dozens of prohibiting offenses and conditions — from serious felonies to less obvious traps: certain drug convictions, three DUIs within five years, active PFA orders with firearm relinquishment, and misdemeanor domestic-violence convictions. One that surprises people constantly: holding a medical marijuana card creates a Federal-law problem for firearm possession, whatever Pennsylvania law says. If any of this might touch your record, get advice before you apply — a denial creates a paper trail.
A sheriff may deny for "character and reputation" reasons, and may revoke a license for good cause — a term the statute doesn't define, which means it gets litigated. Revocation notice must be written, specific, and sent certified mail, and you can appeal to the Court of Common Pleas. PICS background-check denials have their own challenge process through the State Police with strict deadlines, plus a separate FBI appeal. These fights are winnable — Attorney Mergl has handled the permitting process from both the teaching side and the courtroom side — but the clocks are short.
If you carry, know the rules of the encounter before it happens: where you can't carry (courthouses, Federal facilities, and other prohibited places), what reciprocity means when crossing state lines, and how to handle a traffic stop while armed — an area Mergl also teaches. Calm, informed compliance during the stop, and every legal fight afterward through counsel. Charged with a firearms offense anyway? That's exactly our fight.
45 days to investigate and determine eligibility.
Yes, through any PA county sheriff — but generally only if you hold a valid carry license from your home state when your state issues them.
Not necessarily — it depends entirely on the reason. Some disqualifications can be challenged, cleared, or resolved through record relief. Tell us what happened.
MERGL