Can you use WooCommerce to sell guns?

WooCommerce gives you the store. Product pages, cart, checkout, shipping zones, taxes, orders, and customer accounts all come with it. You can add plugins for the parts a gun store needs.

Out of the box it does not know a rifle from a T-shirt. It has no FFL dealer selector. It has no state-by-state firearm rules. It does not run background checks, fill out a 4473, or keep your bound book. Those stay with you, the receiving dealer, and the systems licensed for them.

Automattic, the company behind WooCommerce, says this in its WordPress.com store guidelines. It does not prohibit the WooCommerce software for firearms merchants who host somewhere else. Those merchants can still buy Woo Marketplace extensions with a valid dealer license.

This is the part that trips people up. The store software is fine. The default payment options are not.

• WooPayments: no. Its prohibited list includes "Firearms and ammunition." WordPress.com's guidelines also bar firearms merchants from WooPayments and other Jetpack-based extensions, such as WooShipping and Tax.
• Square: no. Square's General Terms bar using its services "for the sale of firearms, firearm parts, ammunition, weapons."
• PayPal: no. PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy prohibits transactions involving "ammunition, firearms, or certain firearm parts or accessories."
• Stripe: maybe, with review. In late 2025 Stripe moved legal firearms from prohibited to restricted. Its list now shows firearms under "limited availability" and tells you to contact its sales team. Expect underwriting before you take a payment. WooPayments runs on Stripe and still lists firearms as prohibited, so do not assume one means the other.

What dealers use instead is a merchant account underwritten for firearms by a bank or processor that accepts FFLs. That account connects to WooCommerce through a payment gateway: GOAT Payments, or bring your own. The gateway moves the card data. The merchant account is the part that gets approved for your business. Get that approval in writing before you launch.

WordPress.com's store guidelines prohibit selling "firearms or other weaponry, including parts, accessories, and ammunition." A gun store cannot run there.

Self-hosted WooCommerce is the answer. You install it on a host whose terms allow a firearms business, and you own the site and the data. Coriolis runs its dealer stores on WP Engine and manages them for you.

Federal law keeps a dealer from selling a gun straight to an unlicensed buyer in another state. When someone buys a gun online from out of state, it ships to a licensed dealer in the buyer's home state. That dealer runs the transfer. Your checkout should make "ship to an FFL" the only option when a firearm is in the cart.

That takes a dealer selector at checkout. Three WooCommerce plugins that do it:

• FFL Checkout (FFL Cockpit, listed on WordPress.org as g-FFL Checkout). FFL search by ZIP and map, sync with the ATF FFL database, ATF eZ Check, an FFL document database, and state shipping restrictions. $15.99 a month on FFL Cockpit's site. Coriolis includes it on Militia and above.
• Automatic FFL (Refactored Group). A dealer map at checkout, automatic detection of FFL-required products, and state ammunition rules. From $99 a month.
• FFL Bridge. ZIP-based dealer lookup that saves the chosen dealer to the order. Has a free plan.

Federal law bars a dealer from selling any firearm or ammunition to someone under 18. For handguns and other non-long-gun ammunition, the federal age in the statute is 21. On September 18, 2026, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel said it will not criminally enforce the under-21 handgun rule against dealers who sell to law-abiding adults aged 18 to 20. The statute is still on the books, and many states set their own age limits. Ask your attorney before you change your age rules.

A pop-up that asks "Are you 21?" proves nothing. For a firearm, the receiving FFL checks ID at transfer. For anything you ship to a home address, decide how you will verify age before you launch.