Getting a Pistol Permit on Long Island in 2025

Getting a Pistol Permit on Long Island (Nassau County)

If you live in Nassau County and you’re thinking about getting a pistol permit this year, brace yourself. It’s not impossible, but it definitely takes patience. The process has changed a little since 2020, but not enough to make it feel modern. You still deal with the same county pistol license division, the same paperwork, and most of the same frustrations. Suffolk County and the rest of New York State have their own quirks, but Nassau is still known for being one of the faster counties for approvals, even if it’s also one of the most expensive.

The first step is gathering what feels like a small mountain of paperwork. You’ll need passport style photos taken within 30 days of your application, a valid government ID, proof of residency, and a certified driving abstract from the DMV, which still costs ten dollars and takes about three weeks to arrive after you mail the request to Albany. Fingerprinting is required and costs around eighty eight dollars. Once you’ve got your prints in the system and your forms notarized, an investigator is assigned to your case. From that point, you have six months to finish the rest of the process or your application expires.

When it comes to background checks, honesty really is the best policy, though it can make things more complicated. A friend of mine listed that someone in his household had been prescribed antidepressants years ago, and that small detail triggered an extra layer of review. The county told him he had to install a biometric gun safe bolted to the wall, something that turned out not to be legally required. Any locking safe that secures the firearm would have satisfied the rule, but like most government offices, accuracy isn’t always their strong suit. Thankfully, his assigned investigator was understanding, checked the safe without hassle, and signed off quickly.

The whole process from start to finish isn’t cheap. The application alone costs two hundred dollars, fingerprinting adds another eighty plus, and registering a handgun once you buy it costs ten dollars each time. And here’s the kicker, when you buy your handgun, you don’t just walk out with it. You first have to go to the licensing bureau to register the serial number and pay the fee, then return to the gun shop to actually pick it up. It’s a back and forth shuffle that makes you wonder if efficiency was ever part of the design.

When all was said and done, the total came out to just over a thousand dollars for my friend’s first pistol in Nassau County, and that’s without ammunition. For a straightforward applicant with no special conditions, you’re looking at roughly three hundred dollars in fees before you even buy the gun. The rules are strict and the bureaucracy can be laughable, but once you’ve got that permit card in hand, you can finally walk into a gun shop and legally handle a pistol in New York. It’s a drawn out process, but for anyone serious about responsible firearm ownership on Long Island, it’s worth seeing through to the end.

Cost Breakdown for a Nassau County Pistol Permit (2025)