Open carry is permitted in Georgia for lawful weapons carriers. Since the Georgia Constitutional Carry Act (SB 319) took effect on April 12, 2022, O.C.G.A....
Reviewed by Will Luker, Founder of CCW Hub. USCCA Training Counselor, USCCA Certified Instructor, NRA Certified Instructor, Law Enforcement.
Open carry is permitted in Georgia for lawful weapons carriers. Since the Georgia Constitutional Carry Act (SB 319) took effect on April 12, 2022, O.C.G.A. § 16-11-126 authorizes a lawful weapons carrier to carry a handgun "on his or her person" anywhere in most public places. The statute does not distinguish between open and concealed carry. If you may carry a handgun in Georgia, you may carry it visibly in a holster or hidden under your shirt. The choice is yours.
Long guns are even broader. Under O.C.G.A. § 16-11-126(b), any person who is not prohibited by law from possessing a long gun may have or carry one on their person. There is no permit requirement and no "lawful weapons carrier" gate for long guns at all.
What constitutional carry did not do: it did not change where you can carry, it did not change who is barred from possessing firearms, and it did not eliminate the WCL. Open carry in Georgia is legal, but the prohibited-places list under O.C.G.A. § 16-11-127 and the school-zone rules under O.C.G.A. § 16-11-127.1 apply the same way to open carry as they do to concealed carry.
O.C.G.A. § 16-11-126 is the operative section. Its method-of-carry rules are simple:
There is no statutory open-carry restriction layered on top of these rules. Georgia does not require a holster, does not require concealment, and does not require that an openly carried handgun be unloaded. The state constitution backs this up at Art. I, § I, Para. VIII, which lets the General Assembly prescribe the manner of carry. On open carry, the General Assembly has chosen location restrictions, not method-of-carry restrictions.
The eligibility rules track the lawful weapons carrier definition in O.C.G.A. § 16-11-125.1(2.1). You may open carry a handgun in Georgia if one of these is true:
Long-gun open carry has a simpler test. Under O.C.G.A. § 16-11-126(b), you may carry a long gun on your person if you are not prohibited by law from possessing one. No WCL, no lawful-weapons-carrier status, no concealed-carry license from another state. The federal prohibitors at 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) still apply, and felons may not possess any firearm under O.C.G.A. § 16-11-131.
The federal and state prohibitors apply the same way to open carry as to concealed carry. You may not carry openly if you are a convicted felon or first-offender probationer (O.C.G.A. § 16-11-131; 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)), under indictment for a felony (§ 922(n)), subject to a qualifying domestic protective order (§ 922(g)(8)), convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence (§ 922(g)(9)), adjudicated mentally incompetent or involuntarily committed, an unlawful user of controlled substances (§ 922(g)(3)), an unlawful alien (§ 922(g)(5)), dishonorably discharged (§ 922(g)(6)), or have renounced U.S. citizenship (§ 922(g)(7)).
Age rules: no one under 18 may carry a handgun in public absent a statutory exception under O.C.G.A. § 16-11-132. No one under 21 may carry without qualifying for the active-duty/honorably-discharged-veteran carve-out at O.C.G.A. § 16-11-129(b)(2)(A). Constitutional carry tracks WCL eligibility, so the age rule applies to permitless open carry too.
Federal law is not relaxed by Georgia's permitless carry rule. A federally prohibited person who carries openly in Georgia is still exposed to a § 922(g) prosecution.
Constitutional carry left O.C.G.A. § 16-11-127 intact. The prohibited-places list applies equally to open and concealed carry. A lawful weapons carrier may not carry a weapon, openly or concealed, into:
Open carry does not unlock any of these locations. Bars are not in the § 16-11-127(b) list; carrying inside a bar is governed by the general private-property rule and § 16-7-21(b)(3) criminal trespass when the owner asks you to leave. The PROHIBITED_PLACES section walks through the governing-body-consent rule for places of worship, the curtilage rules for government buildings, and the penalty grades for each location.
Schools sit in a separate statute. O.C.G.A. § 16-11-127.1 bars firearms in school safety zones, school buildings, school functions, and school buses. A WCL holder caught in a school safety zone faces a misdemeanor; a non-lawful-weapons-carrier faces a felony graded at 2 to 10 years and up to a $10,000 fine.
The K-12 campus-carry exceptions at § 16-11-127.1 are narrow. None of them authorize open carry on K-12 school grounds.
For public colleges and universities, the campus carry exception lives at O.C.G.A. § 16-11-127.1(c)(20), added by HB 280 (2017 Ga. Laws 217, § 5). That subsection allows a lawful weapons carrier age 21 or older to carry a handgun on most public postsecondary property. It applies only to concealed handguns. Openly carrying a handgun on a public college campus is not authorized under (c)(20), even if you are a WCL holder. If you carry on campus, the firearm must be concealed.
Private property owners retain full authority to prohibit firearms on their property. Open carry makes this issue more visible than concealed carry does.
The same rule applies to places of worship under O.C.G.A. § 16-11-127(b)(4): the governing body's consent controls. Without consent, even a lawful weapons carrier may not carry inside. Bars are not in § 16-11-127(b) at all; carrying inside a bar is governed by the same private-property + § 16-7-21(b)(3) framework as any other private establishment.
Georgia's general vehicle-carry authority comes from § 16-11-126, not § 16-11-135. Two subsections do the work:
Case law caveat: Hubbard v. State, 210 Ga. App. 141 (1993), reads the "your own vehicle" rule narrowly. A passenger in someone else's car who is not a lawful weapons carrier needs the driver's or owner's permission to carry inside the vehicle. A lawful weapons carrier carrying under § 16-11-126(c) does not need that permission to carry on their person, but the property owner can still ask them to leave.
O.C.G.A. § 16-11-135 is a different rule. It governs employer parking lots. A private or public employer generally may not search the locked privately owned vehicle of an employee or invited guest on the employer's parking lot, and may not condition employment on an agreement to keep firearms out of the employee's locked vehicle, provided the employee is a lawful weapons carrier and the firearm is locked out of sight in the trunk, glove box, or other enclosed compartment. The statute carves out secured parking, penal institutions, electric utility facilities, certain DoD contractors, employees under firearm-related discipline, and a handful of other categories.
The VEHICLE_CARRY section covers parking-lot rules, employer policies, and traffic stops in detail. For open carry, the operative rule is that a holstered handgun on your hip remains lawful when you get in your car. You do not need a WCL to keep it on you in your own vehicle, and a lawful weapons carrier does not need one to keep it on their person in any private passenger motor vehicle.
Georgia has long allowed long-gun open carry for non-prohibited persons. O.C.G.A. § 16-11-126(b) is the entire rule: any person not prohibited from possessing a long gun may have or carry one on their person. No permit. No lawful-weapons-carrier gate. No concealment rule. The federal handgun-age and long-gun-age FFL purchase rules (21 and 18 respectively) are separate from this carry authority.
Prohibited places still apply to long guns. A rifle in a courthouse or a polling place is as illegal as a handgun. O.C.G.A. § 16-11-127.1 governs school zones for long guns and handguns alike, with a narrow secure-storage carve-out at § 16-11-127.2 that the PROHIBITED_PLACES section covers. Brandishing or pointing a long gun supports aggravated assault under O.C.G.A. § 16-5-21 and pointing-a-firearm under O.C.G.A. § 16-11-102 regardless of carry rules.
Counties and cities may not restrict open carry beyond state law. O.C.G.A. § 16-11-173(b)(1) preempts municipal, county, and political-subdivision regulation of firearms "in any manner." Local "open carry bans," "no open carry on Main Street" rules, and concealed-only zoning are all void on their face. Two narrow carve-outs: law enforcement chiefs and district attorneys may regulate employees under their supervision (§ 16-11-173(c)(2), (c)(3)), and counties and cities may reasonably limit or prohibit the discharge of firearms (§ 16-11-173(e)). Discharge regulation is distinct from carry regulation.
If a Georgia city tells you open carry is banned downtown, that ordinance is preempted. The right response is administrative or judicial, not a confrontation on the street.
Open carry is legal but uncommon socially in Georgia. Carriers should expect more public attention, more employer pushback, and more "no firearms" requests than concealed carriers see. None of that changes the legal analysis, but it does change the friction.
The operative open-carry rule in Georgia: if you qualify as a lawful weapons carrier under O.C.G.A. § 16-11-125.1 and you are not in a place restricted by O.C.G.A. § 16-11-127 or § 16-11-127.1, you may carry a handgun openly anywhere a concealed carrier may. Long guns may be carried openly by anyone not prohibited from possessing a long gun, with the same location restrictions. Method of carry is your choice; location restrictions are not.
This page covers one part of our Georgia concealed carry guide.
Read the complete Georgia guideBrowse local instructors offering state-approved training in your area. Book online, complete your training, and get one step closer to your concealed carry permit.