Overview
Uruguay permits civilian firearm ownership under a licensing regime built on Law No. 19,247, promulgated on 15 August 2014, and its detailed implementing regulation, Decree No. 345/020, issued on 18 December 2020. According to Law No. 19,247 (2014), the possession and carrying of firearms, ammunition, explosives and related materials is prohibited unless it has been duly authorised by the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of National Defence, or both. The statute delegates to the Executive Power the task of defining the categories, characteristics and requirements that civilians must satisfy to obtain such authorisation, which is the function fulfilled by Decree No. 345/020 (2020).
Administration of the system is divided between two ministries. According to the official government trámite guidance published on gub.uy, the Ministry of the Interior — acting through the departmental police headquarters — issues the licence that authorises a civilian to acquire and hold firearms, known by its Spanish acronym THATA (Título de Habilitación para la Adquisición y Tenencia de Armas). Registration of the individual weapons, by contrast, is handled by the Ministry of National Defence through the Servicio de Material y Armamento (SMA), which maintains the Registro Nacional de Armas (National Weapons Registry). Article 4 of Law No. 19,247 (2014) requires private firearm sales to be recorded in that registry, and Article 5 obliges the Defence Ministry to share registration and owner-identification data with the Interior Ministry within a short statutory window.
Uruguay has historically had one of the higher civilian firearm holdings in Latin America. According to figures cited in secondary literature drawing on Small Arms Survey data, roughly 604,000 firearms were registered in the country as of 2018, alongside a substantial estimated stock of unregistered weapons; these numbers should be treated as estimates rather than current official counts. The legal framework combines a shall-issue style licence for ordinary ownership with markedly stricter rules on carrying in public and on the technical categories of weapon a civilian may hold.
The overall structure is therefore layered: a person must first hold a valid THATA to acquire a firearm lawfully; each firearm must then be individually registered in the Registro Nacional de Armas; and carrying a firearm in public requires a separate, additional authorisation. The distinction Uruguayan law draws between tenencia (holding or keeping a firearm, typically at a declared address) and porte (carrying it outside that address) runs through the entire regime and is described in the sections that follow. Because several technical thresholds derive from Decree No. 345/020 (2020) rather than the founding 2014 statute, the regulation is the most current and controlling source for the specific limits set out below.
Ownership & licensing
Civilian firearm ownership in Uruguay is conditioned on obtaining the THATA. According to the official gub.uy trámite page and Decree No. 345/020 (2020), the licence is available to any person over 18 years of age, and it is described as a unique, personal and non-transferable document. Under Article 16 of Decree No. 345/020 (2020), the THATA is valid for five years and may be revoked if the holder's circumstances change in a way that disqualifies them.
The documentary requirements are set out in Article 18 of Decree No. 345/020 (2020). According to that provision, an applicant must submit a copy of an identity document, proof of residence, justification of income, a judicial-background (criminal-record) certificate, and a psychophysical fitness certificate issued by a competent professional. First-time applicants must additionally complete an approved training course covering the legal framework, firearm safety, shooting competency and secure storage, and present a certificate of proficiency in firearm handling issued by an authorised training centre — a requirement the Ministry of the Interior's own guidance confirms applies specifically to first applications.
The number of firearms a licence-holder may keep is capped. According to Decree No. 345/020 (2020), a civilian who wishes to hold more than eight firearms must obtain a collector (coleccionista) licence rather than relying on an ordinary THATA; the ordinary licence is oriented toward a modest personal holding. Registered collectors are subject to their own conditions, including secure storage and, for prohibited categories, disabling of firing mechanisms.
Each firearm must be registered. Article 4 of Law No. 19,247 (2014) requires that private transfers be inscribed in the Registro Nacional de Armas maintained by the Ministry of National Defence's SMA, and commercial dealers are separately obliged under Article 3 of the same law to be authorised, to report each sale within a short statutory period, and to record the buyer's identification and delivery address on the invoice. In practice a buyer registers the acquired weapon and obtains a possession guide (guía de posesión) linking the specific firearm to the licence-holder. Secondary accounts also describe a ballistic-fingerprinting step performed in government facilities at registration, though the practical effectiveness of that system has been questioned.
Decree No. 345/020 (2020) also defines which weapons civilians may not hold at all. According to that regulation, fully automatic firearms of any calibre, submachine guns, rifles and carbines built on automatic or semi-automatic "assault"/military platforms, burst- or automatic-fire pistols, sound suppressors (silencers), and military-grade night-vision or thermal sights are prohibited for ordinary civilians, as are shotguns with barrels shorter than a specified minimum length. Handguns are permitted subject to calibre limits (generally up to 9 mm for ordinary holders, with wider calibres reserved for sport shooters and collectors), so civilian handgun access is best characterised as licensed rather than freely available.
Carry & transport
Uruguayan law sharply distinguishes keeping a firearm from carrying one in public. According to Law No. 19,247 (2014) and Decree No. 345/020 (2020), holding a firearm under a THATA (tenencia) does not by itself authorise a person to carry it outside the declared address. Carrying requires a separate authorisation, the porte de armas, which under Article 28 of Decree No. 345/020 (2020) is limited to handguns kept in an immediate-use condition. According to Article 32 of the same decree, the carry permit is likewise valid for five years and may be renewed in the months before expiry.
The carry permit is issued by the Ministry of the Interior and is treated as more restrictive than the ownership licence. Reporting and secondary summaries of the Uruguayan regime indicate that concealed carry is granted on the basis of a demonstrated, concrete threat to the applicant's life or safety, and that a generalised wish for self-defence is not, on its own, accepted as sufficient justification; readers should treat the precise administrative criteria as subject to the Interior Ministry's current practice, which this article does not verify against a fetched official instruction. What the primary regulation does make clear is that only one firearm may be carried at a time and that it must not be visible — so open carry is effectively not available to civilians, and lawful carrying is concealed carrying under permit.
Uruguayan law also enumerates circumstances and places in which carrying is forbidden even for permit-holders. According to Law No. 19,247 (2014) and its regulation, a person may not carry a firearm while under the influence of alcohol, cannabis or other drugs, and carrying is prohibited at electoral events, public assemblies, demonstrations, indoor or outdoor entertainment venues, dance halls, cabarets and premises where alcoholic beverages are served. Article 33 of Decree No. 345/020 (2020) lists grounds for immediate revocation of a carry permit, including lack of a valid THATA, absence of a valid possession guide, a criminal conviction, intoxication, or violent conduct.
Transport of a firearm that is not being carried for defensive purposes — for example moving a registered weapon between an owner's address, a range or a repair shop — is governed by the same possession-guide system: the firearm must be covered by a valid THATA and possession guide identifying it to its owner. Precise packaging and unloaded-transport rules (for instance whether ammunition must be separated) are set administratively; where this article cannot tie such a detail to a fetched official source, the specific requirement is recorded as unknown. What is established in the primary sources is the core structure — carrying in public is a permitted, permit-only, handgun-only, concealed activity, tightly bounded by location and conduct restrictions, while mere holding of a registered firearm at a declared address flows from the THATA itself.
Travel & import
The importation and cross-border movement of firearms in Uruguay is controlled through the same authorisation architecture that governs domestic ownership, layered on top of customs procedure. According to Law No. 19,247 (2014), no firearm, ammunition or related material may enter the civilian stock without authorisation from the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of National Defence, or both, and commercial importers fall under the dealer-authorisation and reporting obligations of Article 3 of that statute. In practice, importation of firearms for the civilian market is channelled through authorised commercial dealers, and each imported weapon must ultimately be registered in the Registro Nacional de Armas administered by the Ministry of National Defence's Servicio de Material y Armamento (SMA).
For an individual, importing a firearm generally presupposes both the underlying eligibility to own it — a valid THATA — and a specific import authorisation, after which the weapon is entered in the national registry as with any domestic acquisition. Uruguay is also a party to the inter-American framework on firearms trafficking, and Decree No. 377/016 aligned the national definition of "firearm" with the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms (CIFTA), reinforcing that trans-border movement outside the licensed channels is treated as trafficking rather than as ordinary trade.
The detailed procedures a private traveller must follow — the exact permits, the customs declarations, and any temporary-import mechanism for visitors — are administered by the SMA and the national customs authority (Dirección Nacional de Aduanas), and the precise steps and fees are not fixed in the 2014 statute itself. Because this article was not able to verify a current, official step-by-step import procedure for private travellers against a fetched primary source during research, those specifics are recorded as unknown rather than stated with false precision. Prospective importers are directed by the official framework to the SMA and Aduanas for the controlling requirements in force at the time of travel.
What can be stated with confidence from the primary sources is the shape of the regime. First, there is no route by which a civilian may lawfully bring a firearm into Uruguay without prior authorisation; the default rule of Law No. 19,247 (2014) is prohibition absent ministerial authorisation. Second, prohibited categories cannot be imported for ordinary civilian use at all: the categories that Decree No. 345/020 (2020) bars domestically — automatic weapons, submachine guns, semi-automatic military/"assault" platform rifles, suppressors and military optics — are equally barred at the border. Third, any lawfully imported firearm is subject to registration and, if it is to be carried, to the separate porte permit described above.
Visitors intending to bring firearms for hunting or sport competition should expect to require advance authorisation coordinated with the SMA and, where relevant, the organising body or hunting authority; the existence of such temporary arrangements is consistent with the regulated hunting and sport-shooting activity described in the next section, but the exact documentary requirements for a foreign visitor are not verified here and are marked unknown. Travellers are cautioned that carrying or importing without the correct authorisation exposes them to the seizure and penalty provisions summarised under Penalties.
Hunting & sport shooting
Hunting and sport shooting are the principal lawful contexts in which Uruguayan civilians use long guns and higher-capacity or wider-calibre firearms, and Decree No. 345/020 (2020) sets the technical envelope for the weapons involved. According to that regulation, the permissible categories and their magazine limits differ by firearm type. Rimfire rifles chambered in .22 (or smaller) may use magazines holding up to ten cartridges. Centre-fire rifles fitted with detachable magazines are restricted to a substantially lower limit — magazines of up to five cartridges. Shotguns, which are widely used for bird and small-game hunting, are limited to eight cartridges in the magazine and must be of semi-automatic or manual (non-automatic) operation. Pistols, more relevant to sport shooting than to hunting, are limited to magazines of up to twenty-one cartridges under the same decree.
Sport shooters are the beneficiaries of several explicit exceptions within Decree No. 345/020 (2020). While ordinary handgun holders are generally confined to calibres up to 9 mm, the regulation allows sport shooters (and collectors) access to certain wider calibres such as .40 S&W and .45 ACP that are not available to the general licence-holder. This reflects a policy of accommodating recognised competitive disciplines while keeping the default civilian handgun calibre modest. Sport-shooting activity in Uruguay is organised around established clubs — such as the country's shooting societies and rifle clubs — which also serve as authorised training and proficiency-certification centres feeding the THATA process described earlier.
Despite these accommodations, the firmest restrictions still apply to sport and hunting users alike. According to Decree No. 345/020 (2020), semi-automatic rifles built on military or "assault" platforms remain prohibited regardless of the shooting discipline, as do fully automatic firearms and submachine guns; the lawful semi-automatic long guns for civilians are essentially confined to rimfire .22 rifles within the ten-round limit and to non-military-pattern arms within the applicable magazine caps. Secondary summaries also indicate that certain very large calibres — rifles chambered in .50 BMG or above — are barred entirely, and that ammunition rules favour full-metal-jacket projectiles over expanding hollow-point rounds for civilian purposes; these particular calibre and ammunition specifics are drawn from secondary description and are flagged accordingly, with the controlling detail residing in the decree and its annexes.
Hunters must, like all owners, hold a THATA for each firearm and register it in the Registro Nacional de Armas, and the seasonal or species-specific rules of hunting itself fall under separate wildlife and environmental regulation administered by Uruguay's natural-resources authorities rather than under the firearms statute. Where this article cannot tie a specific hunting-season or licensing detail to a fetched official source, it is treated as unknown. The core firearms-law point is that hunting and sport shooting operate inside the same licence-and-registration system as all other civilian ownership, with calibre and magazine allowances calibrated by weapon type and, for competitive shooters, modestly widened by the explicit exceptions in Decree No. 345/020 (2020).
Penalties
Uruguay's firearm offences are set out in Law No. 19,247 (2014), which both created dedicated penalties and amended the Penal Code. The sanctions scale sharply with the seriousness of the conduct, from monetary fines for unlicensed possession up to multi-year imprisonment for trafficking.
For simple unauthorised possession, Article 10 of Law No. 19,247 (2014) provides that a person who holds firearms, ammunition, explosives or related materials without the required authorisation is punished with a fine. According to the official text published in the national gazette (IMPO), the fine ranges from 10 UR to 1,000 UR — that is, from ten to one thousend Unidades Reajustables, Uruguay's indexed accounting unit, so the monetary value tracks inflation over time. This penalty applies to holding without a licence rather than to the more serious trafficking offences below.
Trafficking and illegal manufacture attract imprisonment. According to Article 9 of Law No. 19,247 (2014), internal (domestic) trafficking and the illegal manufacture of firearms are punished with imprisonment ranging from six months ("seis meses de prisión") to six years ("seis años de penitenciaría"). According to Article 8 of the same law, international trafficking is punished more severely, with imprisonment ranging from twelve months ("doce meses de prisión") to twelve years ("doce años de penitenciaría"). Both of those ranges are increased by one third where the offender acts as part of an organised criminal group. These figures are quoted from the official IMPO text of the statute verified during research.
Beyond the custodial and fine provisions, Law No. 19,247 (2014) provides for seizure and forfeiture. According to Article 2, weapons held without authorisation are subject to seizure, and immediate confiscation is contemplated where the holder is being prosecuted for violent crimes, for intimidation involving a firearm, or for domestic-violence offences. Article 7 provides that seized, confiscated or voluntarily surrendered weapons are destroyed after a set period unless they are needed as evidence in ongoing proceedings. The statute originally included, in Article 6, a twelve-month regularisation window during which holders of unauthorised weapons could legalise or surrender them without penalty; that amnesty period was a transitional measure tied to the law's entry into force rather than a standing feature of the regime today.
Administrative consequences run in parallel with the criminal ones. According to Decree No. 345/020 (2020), both the THATA ownership licence and the porte carry permit may be revoked — including with immediate effect in the case of the carry permit under Article 33 — on grounds such as the loss of a valid licence, a criminal conviction, intoxication or violent conduct. Revocation and the attendant loss of the right to hold or carry a firearm can therefore follow even where the conduct is dealt with administratively rather than through prosecution.
Because the specific fine band and the trafficking imprisonment ranges above are quoted directly from the official gazette text of Law No. 19,247 (2014) as verified in this research session, they are stated with precision; the surrounding procedural details that depend on administrative practice or on later regulation are described qualitatively where a controlling primary source was not fetched.
Sources
- Ley N° 19.247 (2014) — full official text, IMPO (Registro Nacional de Leyes y Decretos) (accessed 2026-07-17)
- Decreto N° 345/020 (2020) — firearms regulation, IMPO (accessed 2026-07-17)
- Habilitación para la adquisición y tenencia de armas de fuego (THATA) — official government procedure, gub.uy (accessed 2026-07-17)
- Ley N° 19.247 — Parlamento del Uruguay (legislative record) (accessed 2026-07-17)
- Gun law in Uruguay — Wikipedia (secondary overview, used for cross-checking ownership figures and carry practice) (accessed 2026-07-17)