ATF / FFL Statistics Center

Short answer: There were 127,739 federal firearms licenses (FFLs) in the United States at the end of fiscal year 2025, according to ATF. About 77,755 were business licenses (mostly Type 01 dealers and Type 07 manufacturers), and 49,984 were Type 03 collector licenses. ATF also counted 15,022 NFA special occupational taxpayers (tax year 2023) and completed 8,472 firearms compliance inspections in FY2025, recommending revocation in 83.

Latest data: fiscal year 2025 (Oct. 2024 to Sept. 2025) license and inspection figures from ATF Facts and Figures, FY2025; FFLs by state from the ATF License Type by State report, March 2026; SOT and NFA registry tables from ATF Firearms Commerce in the United States 2024; NFA processing data from ATF Current Processing Times (August 2026). Last updated: September 24, 2026. Next update: when ATF publishes its FY2026 Facts and Figures (usually in the spring) or a new Firearms Commerce report.

Key findings

• There were 127,739 active FFLs at the end of fiscal year 2025 (Sept. 30, 2025), down 0.7% from 128,690 in FY2024 and less than half the 1992 peak of 284,117.
• 77,755 of those were business licenses. The other 49,984 were Type 03 collector licenses, which don't allow a firearms business.
• Type 07 manufacturer licenses keep growing: 21,367 in FY2025, up from 10,498 in FY2015 and 1,773 in FY2000. Type 01 dealer licenses fell to 46,072, the fewest since at least FY1975.
• California (12,291) and Texas (10,407) had the most FFLs in March 2026, but 10,223 of California's are collector licenses. Texas has four times as many business FFLs (8,277 vs 2,068).
• Wyoming has the most FFLs per person (162.4 per 100,000 residents); among the 50 states and D.C., New Jersey (5.3) and D.C. (3.6) have the fewest.
• There were 15,022 special occupational taxpayers (SOTs) in tax year 2023, the latest ATF has published, down from a peak of 17,323 in 2020.
• 8,655,743 weapons were registered under the National Firearms Act as of May 2024, including 3,536,623 silencers. By August 2026 ATF counted 6,654,209 registered silencers.
• ATF processed a record 1,507,443 NFA forms covering 5,817,780 firearms in FY2025. The NFA tax on silencers, SBRs, SBSs, and AOWs dropped to $0 on Jan. 1, 2026, and ATF received 1,874,895 NFA forms in 2026 through Aug. 5.
• ATF completed 8,472 firearms compliance inspections in FY2025. 54.3% found no violations; ATF recommended revocation in 83 (1.0%), down from 195 in FY2024.

Where this data comes from

The data used on this page comes from several ATF sources. The ATF publishes data on the commerce of firearms, which includes much of this data about the firearms industry. However, some of those reports are delayed by at least two years so as not to give a competitive advantage to any particular company. Some of this data is gathered from ATF's published Fact Sheets and the National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment (NFCTA).

To gather this information, the ATF relies on its own figures from the ATF licensing center, the National Firearms Act division, and its industry operations inspections, and also on the annually required Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Exportation Report (AFMER) from manufacturer FFLs. (For manufacturing numbers, see our U.S. firearms industry statistics page.)

We gather, organize, and publish this data as an industry leader in the FFL space. To date, we've helped over 20,000 FFLs. We were founded by, and our courses have been created and are taught by, Ryan Cleckner, a firearms attorney who specializes in federal firearms law and ATF compliance, a bestselling author, firearms industry executive, and former special operations sniper and university professor.