Category Archives: Concealed Carry

The Gun Facts CCW Scorecard (first edition)

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It is time for a new method of grading states based on their concealed-carry regimes. Gun Facts has created one, and the findings are stark. Why Is A New System Needed? The old system classified states by the generality of how concealed-carry permits (CCWs) were provided. The major classifications were: No Carry: Carrying firearms in public was not allowed. May Issue: The government, largely local, had discretion on if and to whom a permit would be issued. Shall Issue: Providing a person was not prohibited (i.e., prior felony conviction) the government would issue a permit. Permitless: No permit was required providing you were not a prohibited person. However, this system was in and of itself inadequate, and the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bruen case changed much. The weaknesses of the old classification system were manifold:

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Stolen Guns

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One way criminals gets guns is to steal them, or to buy guns from gun thieves. The question is if this is a major source of crime guns, and where is the leakage occurring? The answers are serious though the data is convoluted. Takeaways A net 154,746 guns (stolen minus recovered) enter the underground in a year. They are overwhelmingly taken from civilians. Most disappear from vehicles, not homes. Public carry is not a predictor of gun theft rates, but the adult population is. Gun theft rates are not covariant with gun homicide rates. A crabby note about data Data quality is the bane of research, and data quality on this issue is inconsistent. We’ll include rants about data as we explain our findings, but for starters, we’ll note that snapshot data (i.e., a one-year picture) is divorced from long-term data, and the long-term data required us to triangulate factors. … Continue reading →

Grounded

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“Stand your ground” laws are very misunderstood and heavily politicized. And from a data perspective, they don’t do much at all, though they appear to be a net positive. Take-aways “No duty to retreat” states saw mild declines in both total homicide and gun homicide rates. The majority of “no duty to retreat” states saw declines, where the majority of other states saw increases. Can You Stand It? The name itself, “stand your ground,” is a heroic meme and a bit of a misnomer. However, the non-politicized term “no duty to retreat law” is both cumbersome and provides neither the pro- or anti-gun factions with a phrase to inspire their followers… or fill them with dread. Indeed, “stand your ground” (the pro-gun phrase) evokes a “cowboy American” posture while “shoot first law” (the anti-gun phrase) evokes endangering chaos. Stripped of such fluffiness, “no duty to retreat” laws are two things … Continue reading →

Carry Calculations

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You have very likely stood next to someone in line at the grocery store who was carrying a concealed handgun. Multiple times. Perhaps in the same day. A tally from the largest survey of gun ownership and usage produced some surprising data, including how people in may-issue states ignore a lack of permits. Takeaways 4% of all adults in America carry daily. About 6M, or nearly 120,000 in each state. 30% of all handgun owners carry once or more a month. In may-issue and shall-issue states, a sizable number of people carry without permits. Nine times as many people carry daily than there are on-duty police. Carry rate is lower in permitless states than shall-issue states. The Source We recently reported about the largest modern survey of gun ownership. From that, other researchers extracted data on public carry of firearms. Key is that there is not presently a larger, more … Continue reading →

Permitless Murders

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In August of 2022, half of the states in America will (or did, depending on when you read this) switch to “permitless carry,” which means residents (and, depending on the state, occasionally non-residents) can carry firearms concealed in public and not have to obtain a permit first. Naturally, this scares some people. So, with seven states currently having been permitless long enough for analysis, it’s worth seeing if the fear is warranted. Main Take-Aways Compared to states that made no changes in concealed carry laws, there was no change in homicide rates. When we remove one outlier state, there is a drop in homicides in the permitless states compared to states that made no change. When we eliminate a sparsely populated frontier state, most trends are flat or downward. Comparing Apples and Pineapples Our objective is to see if states switching to permitless carry have a noticeable change in the … Continue reading →

Concealed Carry Types and Crime

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We love Gun Facts readers. They ask some interesting questions. The Mega Warning Do not consider this to be rigorous analysis. There are a multitude of confounding variables, and the Gun Facts project does not have the funding to tackle an exhaustive review. But we can present a quick acid test. CCW Types The biggest variable is the type of concealed carry policy (“CCW” herein for brevity’s sake). There are currently three primary types: May-Issue: This is where local legislation allows local authorities to issue or not issue CCWs. California is the poster child for this, with a small number of county sheriffs having a “shall issue” policy, but most places issuing permits only to the well connected. Shall-Issue: This is where the government will issue any adult a CCW if they lack a criminal background. That being said, some states have few requirements and others require training, additional background … Continue reading →

Concealed Millions

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I missed a tiny tidbit on my first pass through a recent Pew poll covering gun issues. The key paragraph is: “Among those who own a handgun, about one-in-four (26%) say they carry their gun with them outside of their home all or most of the time, a share that rises to 41% among those who think of their local community as unsafe.” The number was surprising to me only in that the concealed carry permit holders I know make holstering a standard part of their grooming process. If anything, I thought the rate of daily carry would have been higher. What does this mean in terms of guns on the street? The number is

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Constitutional Carry Certainty

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Back in 1988, when Florida became the first large state to enact shall-issue concealed carry, there was a great deal of uncertainty about the outcome. But their post-passage lack of bloodshed led to all but a handful of backwards thinking states (talking to you California) to pass similar legislation. The same thing might be happening with permitless carry (a.k.a. constitutional carry), where the whole concealed carry licensing process is jettisoned. I got curious about the criminological realities of permitless carry when a Gun Facts fan emailed to ask what we knew about the subject, which was nearly nothing. The reason is that aside from one outlier state, this is a new phenomenon and statistics are limited at best. But curiosity is a demon, and we had to take a peek. After a little number crunching, our extremely preliminary investigation concludes that permitless carry at very least causes no mayhem. The … Continue reading →

Number Nuts

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When both economists and criminologists think that concealed carry either decreases or does not change homicide rates, we may have scientific consensus. Main take-aways: Survey of economists and criminologists Only surveyed those who have published in peer reviewed publications Only surveyed those who studied empirical data Scientific consensus is that: Guns prevent crime more than cause it “Gun free” zones are dangerous Guns do not change suicide risk CCW licensees are very law abiding CCWs decrease or do not change homicide rates Studying People Who Study Guns Both economist and criminologists study crime. They take different views of it, the former examining crime as a rational response to risk and opportunity, and the latter from a legalistic and bureaucratic process. This caused economist John Lott and criminologist Gary Mauser to team-up and survey their peers on a small set of gun related issues. The goal was to see if there … Continue reading →

Booze, Bullets and Bunk

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When propagandists panic, they show their own paranoia. I was forwarded an email from Michael Bloomberg’s agitprop organization, Everytown. In this email, they stated with authentic dismay and dread that in some states you can order a beer in a bar while having a holstered sidearm (providing you have a concealed carry license, a.k.a. CCW). Sane people – which evidently excludes folks working for Bloomberg – would ask “Is this a problem?” Phrased more fully, “Do CCW holders enjoying an adult beverage in their corner watering hole cause problems?” The answer is no. In fact, stats show it might actually abate violence. Shots and Glasses In our Non-Brady Scorecard project (alas, no longer being published), we reviewed both pro- and anti-gun control laws, including allowing CCW holders to pack heat in pubs. Not many states allow this, but enough have had the law in place to at least get an … Continue reading →