By Dave Workman | Senior Editor
John Lott
The newest update on the number of people licensed to carry concealed in the U.S. estimates that the ranks have swelled to more than 18.6 million, according to the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC).
It represents a 304 percent increase in legally-armed private citizens with carry permits or licenses since 2007.
The new estimate also translates to 7.3 percent of all adults in the United States, and approximately 8 percent growth over the number of active licenses and permits since 2018. An abstract of the report may be read here.
More than 2.1 million additional carry licenses/permits have been issued since Donald Trump became president, said Dr. John Lott, founder and president of the Center. The researcher and author added that this may not represent all the people legally carrying because 16 states have adopted “constitutional carry,” allowing open or concealed carry without a license or permit.
In states such as Alaska, Arizona and Idaho, there is a growing movement to carry without a permit or license, and the open carry movement is also gradually expanding in some regions.
Thirteen states now have more than 10 percent of the adult population licensed to carry. Those states are, from west to east, Washington, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
Alabama has the highest percentage of active permits of all 50 states at 26.3 percent, with Indiana coming in second with 17.9 percent.
It’s the third year in a row for an increase in concealed carry licenses, the CRPC report said, and the increase coincides with the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2018 that shows a slight decline in violent crime, including homicides committed with firearms.
Lott recently spoke at the Gun Rights Policy Conference in Phoenix, sponsored by the Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. There, he expressed skepticism about the value of so-called “universal background checks” as a tool in reducing violent gun-related crime, especially mass shootings.
“If I wanted to do something,” Lott stated, “it would be to get rid of gun-free zones.”
Some experts say most mass shootings in this century have occurred in so-called “gun-free” zones,
Four states—Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania and Georgia—now have more than 1 million active licenses and in Florida, the number is above 2 million.
Nationally, women made up an impressive 26.5 percent of license/permit holders in the 12 states that provide data by gender, the report added.
Lott noted in a telephone conversation that the largest increases in carry permits and licenses is among women and minorities. The report says “permits for women (are) growing 101% faster than those for men.” In Texas, the report said, “black females saw a 3.6 times greater percentage increase in permits than white males.”
The report also revealed, “From 2012 to 2018, in the four states that provide data by race over that time period, the number of black people with permits increased almost 20% faster than the number of whites with permits. Asians appear to be the group that has experienced the largest increase in permitted concealed carry, growing 29% faster than whites.”
The report also reveals a growing diversity in the firearms community, as was evident at the Phoenix conference where minorities including the LBGTQ community were represented. There was even a representative from the Liberal Gun Club.
