Can I Carry There? Concealed Carry Trip Planner by State

Tell it which permit you hold and which states you are driving through, in order, and it returns a state-by-state ruling for your route: who honors your permit, where you can fall back on permitless carry, where you cannot carry at all — and the rule almost nobody checks, whether a loaded handgun is legal in your vehicle in that state. Built on the same verified dataset as our concealed carry reciprocity map and open carry map.

How the ruling is worked out

There is no clever modelling here and there should not be. The tool applies four rules in order, to each state on your route, and it shows you the underlying data so you can check it yourself.

1. Is this your home state? Then your own state law applies and we say so.
2. Does this state recognize your permit? Twenty-four jurisdictions honor every valid out-of-state permit. Sixteen publish a named list. Eleven honor none. Four of the honoring jurisdictions accept resident permits only, so a non-resident permit fails there even though the issuing state appears on their list.
3. If it does not recognize your permit, is permitless carry a fallback for you? Twenty-nine jurisdictions allow carry without a permit, each with its own minimum age — 18 in fifteen of them, 19 in two, 21 in twelve — and all twenty-nine extend it to non-residents. If your age clears the minimum, you are covered even where your permit is not.
4. If neither applies, it is a hard stop. No permit issued anywhere in America makes it lawful, and the tool says so plainly rather than hedging.

Then, regardless of the answer above, every state card also reports the four things that trip people up even when their permit is fine: whether a loaded handgun is lawful in the vehicle, whether open carry is lawful, what happens on a public campus, and whether the state preempts local ordinances. A recognized permit does not automatically carry any of those with it.

Worked example, done by hand

A Florida resident permit, holder aged 21, driving I-95 from Jacksonville to Portland, Maine — fifteen states:

Six of the fifteen are hard stops: Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. South Carolina resolves to a fallback rather than a yes, because South Carolina’s recognition statute describes a standard rather than publishing a list we could verify — but its permitless carry at 18 and over covers visitors anyway, which is what the tool tells you. And on top of all that, eight of the fifteen states restrict a loaded handgun in the vehicle: North Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. That is the entire eastern seaboard problem in one table, and it is why “my permit is good in 38 states” is the wrong question to ask before a road trip.

The eleven jurisdictions that honor nothing

This is the number to memorise, because no permit strategy defeats it. In each of these eleven, the only lawful routes are a non-resident permit issued by that jurisdiction where one exists, transporting the firearm unloaded and cased under the state’s own transport rule, or driving around.

Two of these carry live litigation that could move them, and both are on our weekly sweep: DC (the Benson en banc rehearing, with the magazine limit in force meanwhile) and Oregon (Measure 114, argued to the Oregon Supreme Court in November 2025 with no decision yet). Illinois also runs a narrow vehicle exception that is unlike anything else on this list — an eligible non-resident may carry a concealed firearm within a vehicle under 430 ILCS 66/40(e), stored locked when leaving it. The tool surfaces that on the Illinois card rather than burying it.

The rule nobody checks: your vehicle

People plan a route around permit recognition and then discover the actual problem is the car. In fifteen jurisdictions a loaded handgun in the vehicle needs a permit, must be unloaded and cased, or is simply not allowed. In three of them — and this is the trap — the vehicle rule is stricter than you would guess from the recognition status alone.

Federal law does give you a floor. The Firearm Owners’ Protection Act safe-passage provision (18 U.S.C. 926A) protects transporting an unloaded firearm, not readily accessible, between two places where you may lawfully possess it. It is a defense, not a permit, and it does not cover a loaded gun in the cabin. Treat it as the fallback that gets you through, not as permission to carry.

How far every permit actually reaches

The table below is the dataset behind the headline. For each of the 51 jurisdictions it gives the number of the other 50 that honor its resident permit, computed row by row from each honoring state’s own published recognition list or statute — not from a national aggregator.

Two things worth reading off that table. First, reach and restrictiveness are not the same axis: California, Hawaii, Maryland, New York and Rhode Island issue permits that are honored in 27 places each, more than Vermont could theoretically manage, and yet those same states honor nobody in return. Recognition is not reciprocal in practice and there is no rule that says it must be. Second, the top of the table is boring on purpose — North Carolina and Ohio lead at 38 not because their permits are special but because they are on almost every list-publishing state’s list. If you have a choice of which non-resident permit to obtain, the reach column is the number to optimise.

How to read your results

• Green, “permit honored” means the state recognizes your permit for concealed carry. It does not mean open carry, campus carry or vehicle carry are settled — read the four facts on the card.
• Purple, “permitless fallback” means your permit is not what makes you legal there; your age is. That matters, because a permitless state can still bar you from places a permit holder may go, and because permitless status is the first thing a legislature changes.
• Red, “hard stop” means no permit you can realistically hold makes this lawful. Plan the route around it or apply for that jurisdiction’s own non-resident permit where one exists.
• Gray, “unverified” means we would not tell you it is fine when the state has not published something we could check. One state currently sits here: South Carolina, whose statute states a standard rather than a list.
• Every card carries a “last verified” date and, where one exists, a dated watch note — a bill, an injunction or a pending decision that would change the row. Fifty-one of fifty-one rows carry a watch note, because carry law is never actually settled anywhere.

Frequently asked questions

Common questions

Related on Freedoms Lodge

This page is authoritative on one trip: your permit, the states on your route, and the ruling for each one in order. It is not the place to start if you are asking a general question. For how reciprocity works at all, read the concealed carry reciprocity guide. To look one state up on a map, use the concealed carry reciprocity map. For the states that need no permit in the first place, see constitutional carry states. The data behind all of them is published free as the CCW reciprocity dataset.

Sources and method

• Recognition, permit and regime data: the Rev-4 dataset behind the Freedom’s Lodge concealed carry reciprocity map, built row by row from each jurisdiction’s statute, attorney general chart, state police page or licensing agency, and published as a CC BY 4.0 download on our dataset page. Per-state citations and source URLs appear on each state card in the tool and on each state guide.
• Open carry, vehicle carry, campus and preemption data: the dataset behind our open carry map, with statute citations and a dated watch note per state.
• Federal safe passage: 18 U.S.C. 926A.
• Method and verification policy: how we verify carry law data.
• Weekly change log: carry law updates.

Data updated August 2026. Recognition, permitless-age, open-carry and vehicle rules are re-checked on a weekly carry-law sweep; each state card carries its own last-verified date and, where one exists, a dated watch note naming the bill, injunction or pending decision that would change it. One row is openly incomplete: South Carolina publishes a standard rather than a recognition list, and we say so instead of guessing.