1.4 Million More Americans Than Last Year Have Concealed Carry Permits, Report Says

Ella Kietlinska
By Ella Kietlinska
October 4, 2019US News
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1.4 Million More Americans Than Last Year Have Concealed Carry Permits, Report Says
A man shows a holstered weapon at a concealed carry permit class in Provo, Utah, on Dec. 19, 2015. (George Frey/Getty Images)

The Crime Prevention Research Center released on Oct. 2 a report revealing that nearly 19 million Americans have concealed carry permits — an increase of 1.4 million compared to last year.

The report uses the number of permits issued to carry a concealed handgun to show how many people across the United States own guns. The researchers who produced the report consider this a better method to estimate gun ownership than surveys, which can be affected by respondents’ unwillingness to answer questions related to gun ownership.  However, there are 16 states where people do not need a permit to carry guns so the actual numbers may be even higher than those presented in the report.

The Exponential Growth in the Number of Concealed Handgun Permits

According to the report the number of concealed handgun permits has been growing exponentially since 1999. Although the permit data is better to estimate changes in gun ownership than background check data or polls, it may lead to an underestimation due to the following reasons:

  • Carry permits are not required in 16 states whose residents usually obtain permits only if they travel outside of their state. In these states the number of permits may also depend on permit fees or training requirements. The lower the fee, the more willing people are to obtain permits.
  • There are a few states that do not have readily available data on concealed carry permits. In addition, some states do not aggregate data at the state level or only partially aggregate data, for example they might only aggregate data for non-residents.
  • For some states the permit data is old so the recent growth of permits may not be accurately reflected in their data.

The report estimates that in 2019 the number of concealed hand gun permits was 18.66 million, which means that 7.3 percent of American adults have permits.  This number represents a 304 percent increase since 2007 and about an 8 percent increase since 2018. Only last year, the number of permit holders grew by about 1.4 million.

The states with the largest percentage of adults with a concealed carry permit are: Alabama—26.30 percent, Indiana—17.87 percent, South Dakota—16.02 percent. On the lower end are Hawaii—zero percent (0.02 percent if private security permits are included), NewJersey—0.02 percent, Rhode Island—0.25 percent).

guns
A woman inspects a firearm in an exhibit hall at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center during the NRA’s annual convention in Dallas, Texas, on May 6, 2018. (Loren Elliott/AFP/Getty Images)

Changes in Gender and Race of Concealed Carry Permit Holders

Only eleven states, with about 5.4 million permit holders in total have collected permit data by gender for 2019. Among those states, 26.5 percent of permit holders are women.

Five states have permit issuance data by race. In these states, the number of permits rose at a 20 percent faster rate for blacks than for whites between 2012 and 2018.

One of those states, Texas, reported rapid growth of permit holders among Asians, Blacks, and American Indians after the state reduced the number of minimal training hours required in 2012.

Concealed Gun Permit Holders Are Extremely Law-Abiding

To determine actually how law-abiding permit holders are, the researchers used a method that compares permit holders to U.S. police officers which they found to be one of the most law-abiding groups in the United States. In years 2005-2007 there were about 103 crimes per hundred thousand police officers. The same rate is 37 times higher for the entire U.S. population.

Using combined data for Florida and Texas the report determines that the rate of permit holders convicted of a misdemeanor and a felony is less than a sixth of the same rate for police offices. As for firearms violation, the rate is just one-seventh of the rate for police offices. “Data are similar in other states,” the report says.

Thus, the report concluded that, “It is very rare for permit holders to violate the law,” and “concealed carry permit holders are even more law-abiding than police.”

gun shop
Customers shop for a handgun at Metro Shooting Supplies in Bridgeton, Missouri, on Nov. 12, 2014. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Gun Ownership Role in Deterring Crime

It is quite complicated to draw a comparison between concealed carry permit rates and violent crime or murder rates. Many factors impact crime rates like “arrest and conviction rates, policing policies, prison, demographics, income, poverty, and education”, according to the report.

The analysis presented in the report uses a different approach due to a lack of data needed to perform a more sophisticated estimation. It takes into consideration only the states that require permits.

To determine if changes in concealed carry permits impact crime rates the researchers analyze how crime rates vary before and after changes in a state’s concealed carry laws.

Using this method the researchers found, based on data from 2011 through 2014, that “a 10 percent increase in the share of the adult population with permits reduces the murder rate by 1.4 percent.”

However, due to the lack of necessary data to perform a complex analysis on the relationship between permit rates and crime rates, the authors stated that the report “should only be viewed as suggestive.”

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