Category Archives: Concealed Carry

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 →

Reducing Rampages

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Stopping madmen with guns is – statistically speaking – best solved by people, not police, and people with guns. Rampage killings (which include all the common varieties of incidents where a lot of people are murdered, be it mass public shootings, active shooter events, spree killings, etc.) are what scares voters. Most people know and avoid rough neighborhoods. They also choose friends and mates wisely. This keeps mayhem low, evidenced by the fact most gun crime is isolated in a tiny number of towns with big city gang infestations. It is the random odds of dying in a rampage shooting that spooks folks. One fellow decided to see what keeps the most people alive in such incidents, and discovered citizens – especially armed citizens – are the most effective, and vastly more so than cops (see the section below on methodology, data quality, etc.). Survival is the objective The researcher … Continue reading →

Campus Carry, Not Scary

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Why does California State Senator Lois Wolk choose to be ignorant? With her representing a college town you would hope otherwise. Wolk is campaigning to largely prevent the few folks with California concealed carry licenses (CCW) from exercising the right on campuses (the bill as currently drafted, subject to change no doubt, leaves it up to schools to set policy). Ignoring how this creates legal jeopardy for CCW holders unaware of shifting restrictions from place to place, the bigger question is “why?” The empirical data does not support the need to discriminate as Wolk wants to do. In our recent Non-Brady State Scorecard report (ED: alas, no longer being published), we discovered that states that allow CCW holders to carry on campuses, both K12 public schools and college campuses, had significantly lower

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