NYC Gun License Social Media List

Yes — a three-year list of your social media accounts is part of a New York gun-license application. Under New York's Concealed Carry Improvement Act (DCJS), that social-media list is one of the pieces you assemble and submit. It surprises a lot of applicants, and it generates more anxiety than it needs to. This guide covers what the list actually asks for, how to compile it completely, and why the honest approach is also the easy one.

What the requirement is

The rule is straightforward on its face: New York State's CCIA (DCJS) makes a three-year list of your social media accounts part of the application. It's a disclosure item — you're listing the accounts you've had over the roughly three-year lookback, as part of the file you submit yourself.

It helps to understand what this is and isn't. It's a list of accounts, an inventory. Think of it as naming the platforms and handles you've used, so the picture of your public presence is complete. Like every other piece of your application, you compile it and submit it yourself; no service does it for you, and only a New York-licensed attorney may represent an applicant before the License Division.

What to include

The safe and honest rule is: if it's a social media account you've had in the lookback window, list it. Don't play definitional games about what "counts." The common platforms people use over three years include:

• Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), TikTok, Snapchat
• LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit
• Any other social platform where you maintained an account under a handle

For each, you're generally identifying the platform and the account (your handle or username). Include accounts you still use and accounts you've stopped using but had during the window. The lookback is about the last few years of your presence, not just what's open on your phone today.

A few honest edge cases:

• Old or abandoned accounts. If you had an account during the lookback window, it belongs on the list even if you never log in anymore. "I forgot I still had it" is understandable; leaving it off on purpose is the thing to avoid.
• Multiple accounts on one platform. If you run more than one handle on the same platform, list them. The requirement is about your accounts, plural.
• Anonymous or pseudonymous handles. An account isn't exempt because it doesn't use your legal name. If it's yours and it was active in the window, list it.

If you're genuinely unsure whether something counts — a defunct forum login, a platform that blurs the line between "social media" and something else — the candor-maximizing instinct is to include it and let the completeness speak for itself. When the ambiguity is real and consequential, that's a question worth raising with a New York-licensed attorney rather than resolving in the direction that's convenient.

Why completeness beats curation

Here's the reframe that takes the stress out of this: the list is an inventory, and the goal is completeness, not curation. The failure mode isn't "I had an account someone disapproves of." The failure mode is "I left an account off, and that omission raised a candor question."

This is the same principle that runs through the entire application. Just as sealed and dismissed arrests are still disclosed rather than quietly omitted, the social-media list is about surfacing your presence honestly, not manicuring it. An application built on candor discloses more, never less. The person who lists every account — including the awkward or forgotten ones — is in a stronger position than the person who curated a tidy list that turns out to be incomplete.

That also means the anxiety many applicants feel — "what if they don't like what I posted?" — is mostly aimed at the wrong target. The requirement as published is a list of accounts. The honest, low-drama move is to make that list complete.

How to compile it without missing anything

Treat it like a small audit of your own presence:

• Start with your phone and password manager. Your installed apps and saved logins are the fastest way to surface accounts you actually use.
• Check your email for signup confirmations. Searching your inbox for "welcome" or "confirm your account" over the last few years turns up platforms you forgot you joined.
• Think back across the full window, not just today. The list covers roughly three years. Accounts you deleted or stopped using during that window still lived during it.
• Write down platform + handle for each. A clean, legible list — platform, username — is all you're assembling.
• Don't self-censor the list. Completeness is the objective. Leaving something off to keep the list "clean" defeats the entire point.

Where it fits in the file

The social-media list is one disclosure item among several — it sits alongside your notarized references, cohabitant affidavits, training certificate, safe photos, and your candid account of your history. Seeing the whole picture at once makes it easier to treat the list as the routine inventory it is; our requirements overview lays out the full sourced checklist.

Borough logistics vary; if you're applying on Staten Island, our Staten Island gun license guide covers that picture. But the social-media requirement itself is a statewide CCIA item, the same across the five boroughs. And the same posture that carries the rest of your application carries this: disclose fully, list completely, and let honesty do the work.