by Dave Workman | Senior Editor
Concealed carry across the United States has soared over the past seven years, while the murder rate has declined, and a new report from the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) suggests that one reason the number of permits and licenses has increased is because Barack Obama is in the White House.
It’s not that the president is pro-Second Amendment—quite the opposite, since he voiced opposition to concealed carry when he was in the Illinois State Senate—but that so many people are apparently concerned his tenure might produce stricter gun control laws.
While the number of permit applications has soared because all 50 states now have some kind of carry permit scheme, “there appears to be another factor: President Obama’s election in 2008,” the report states. “Not only did Obama’s election increase gun sales, it also increased the number of concealed handgun permits.”
The 27-page report lists the states in terms of how many adults possess licenses or permits to carry, with the Top Ten being, in this order, Alabama, South Dakota, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Georgia, Iowa, West Virginia and Washington.
There are some states that do not require permits or licenses to carry, including Vermont and Arizona, so the number of law-abiding citizens who are actually carrying defensive sidearms may even be higher than the 12.8 million-plus mentioned in the report.
But according to the Washington Times, anti-gunners wasted no time trying to discredit the report.
The newspaper quoted a statement posted on the Violence Policy Center’s website which asserts, “Concealed carry killers are a threat to public safety. The evidence is clear that all too often, private citizens use their concealed handguns to take lives, not to save them.”
But the report tends to refute that assertion, pointing to data from Texas and Florida that suggests legally-armed citizens are far less likely to be convicted of misdemeanors or felonies than police officers.
According to the report:
- The number of concealed handgun permits is expanding at an ever-increasing rate. Over the past year, 1.7 million additional new permits have been issued—a 15.4% increase in just one single year. This is the largest ever single-year increase in the number of concealed handgun permits.
- 2% of the total adult population has a permit.
- Five states now have more than 10% of their adult population with concealed handgun permits.
- In ten states, a permit is no longer required to carry in all or virtually all of the state. This is a major reason why legal carrying handguns is growing so much faster than the number of permits.
- Since 2007, permits for women have increased by 270% and for men by 156%.
- Some evidence suggests that permit holding by minorities is increasing more than twice as fast as for whites.
- Between 2007 and 2014, murder rates have fallen from 5.6 to 4.2 (preliminary estimates) per 100,000. This represents a 25% drop in the murder rate at the same time that the percentage of the adult population with permits soared by 156%. Overall violent crime also fell by 25 percent over that period of time.
- Regression estimates show that even after accounting for the per capita number of police and people admitted to prison and demographics, the adult population with permits is significantly associated with a drop in murder and violent crime rates.
- Concealed handgun permit holders are extremely law-abiding. In Florida and Texas, permit holders are convicted of misdemeanors or felonies at one sixth the rate that police officers are convicted.
The report was authored by CPRC President John R. Lott and Research Director John E. Whitley. It comes at a time when the right to carry has been under increased scrutiny with well-financed gun prohibition lobbying groups pushing to roll back right-to-carry statutes and force new, restrictive regulations on gunowners.
Coincidentally, on the day the report was released, Newsweek ran a piece challenging both sides in the gun debate to meet on “middle ground” with what it called a “common-sense compromise” that included allowing the concealed carry of guns using the “shall issue” standard.
However, the article also favored outlawing the “public display” of firearms, which might be rejected out-of-hand by open carry advocates.
The CPRC report notes that, “the number of permits has grown faster than the number of states that allow concealed carry. This is because in each state, the longer the law is in effect, more and more people have gradually applied and received permits.”
“Initially,” according to the report, “the increase in permits was slow, growing from roughly 2.7 million permit holders in 1999 to 4.6 million in 2007. But the number of concealed handgun permits literally exploded during the Obama presidency. For December 2011, the federal Government Accountability Office estimated that there were at least 8 million concealed handgun permits. By the June 2014, it was 11.1 million; in 2015, 12.8 million.
“In other words, during the eight years from 1999 to 2007, the number of permits increased by about 240,000 per year. During the next four years, the number of permits surged by 850,000 per year. Then from the end of 2011 to 2013 the yearly increase rose by 1,550,000. And during the last year the increase has continued to accelerate to 1,700,000.”
Meanwhile, according to the FBI’s annual crime report, violent crime decreased in all city groupings last year. As for the annual reports from 2013 dating back to 2006, homicides with firearms decreased from 10,177 in 2006 to 8,454 in 2013, the most recent year for which statistics are available.
