Gun license in Brooklyn
The rules are citywide. The hard part in Brooklyn is usually the people you live with — and getting them to a notary.
A Brooklyn gun license application is governed by the same citywide NYPD rules as one filed from any other borough — the borough you live in changes nothing about the process. What tends to be harder in Brooklyn is the household paperwork: a notarized affidavit is required from every adult living in your home, and Brooklyn has a lot of homes with a lot of adults in them — shared apartments, multi-family houses, families under one roof. Every one of those signatures is a person with their own schedule, and collecting them is the most common reason a Brooklyn file stalls before it is ever filed.
Where you live, and who lives there with you
Brooklyn housing is not one thing. A brownstone floor-through, a four-person share off the L, a two-family house where the same family occupies both units — the NYPD rule is the same in all of them, but the amount of work it creates is not. Every adult living in your home signs a notarized affidavit. Four adults means four separate trips to a notary, four people remembering to bring ID, and four chances for the whole package to wait on one person who keeps meaning to get to it.
Add the four character references — also notarized, also other people's calendars — and a Brooklyn applicant is frequently chasing eight signatures from eight humans. That is the real work, and it is entirely front-loaded. It is also the part where your training certificate quietly ages out: the certificate has to be dated within six months of when you file, so if you take the 18 hours first and then spend five months collecting affidavits, you can end up taking the course twice.
The order that works: find out who has to sign before you do anything else, ask them, then book the training so the certificate is fresh when the file is done. The rules driving all of this, with sources:
A notarized affidavit is required from every adult living in your home.
Set by 38 RCNY Chapter 5 · source · we last checked 2026-07-14
Four character references are required, and they must be notarized.
Set by 38 RCNY Chapter 5 · source · we last checked 2026-07-14
Your training certificate must be dated within 6 months of when you file.
Set by New York State (CCIA) · source · we last checked 2026-07-14
New York sets safe-storage rules you must follow once licensed.
Set by NY Penal Law §265.45 · source · we last checked 2026-07-14
Are the gun license rules different in Brooklyn?+
No. Handgun licensing in New York City is centralized at the NYPD License Division, and the rules are identical in all five boroughs. Brooklyn applicants complete the same 18 hours of training, the same four notarized references, the same disclosures, and face the same investigation as everyone else. There is no Brooklyn form and no Brooklyn standard.
Who counts as an adult living in my home?+
A notarized affidavit is required from every adult living in your home — and 'home' means the residence you live in, not the building. A roommate in your apartment signs. A partner who lives with you signs. Your parents downstairs in a separate unit are a separate household. When it's genuinely unclear where the line falls, ask before you file rather than guessing on the form.
I live in a Brooklyn apartment with three roommates. Is that a problem?+
It isn't a disqualifier — it's a scheduling problem. Each adult in your home signs a notarized affidavit, so four adults means four people who each have to sit down with a notary. That's the single most common reason a Brooklyn application sits unfinished. Ask everyone early and make the notary step easy for them.
Does my landlord have to know I'm applying?+
Nothing in the rules requires you to notify a landlord, and we won't tell you what to do about your lease — that's between you and your agreement. What the rules do require is the household affidavits from the adults who live with you, the safe photographs, and compliance with New York's safe-storage rules once you're licensed.
Find out who needs to sign before you spend a dollar on training.
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