Culture changing concealed carry

Starting at Say Uncle I followed a trail of links and found this:

Since President Obama’s election the number of concealed handgun permits has soared, growing from 4.6 million in 2007 to over 12.8 million this year. Among the findings in our report:

  • The number of concealed handgun permits is increasing 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.
  • 5.2% 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 has 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  178%.    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.

Later in the report we find this:

This report will focus on the increase in concealed carry. Obviously, the main focus from a crime prevention point of view is whether people actually do carry guns, not whether they are allowed to do so.

Unsurprisingly, 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. But there appears to be another factor: President Obama’s election in 2008. Not only did Obama’s election increase gun sales, it also increased the number of concealed handgun permits.

Initially 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.

Emphasis added. In other words, as others have observed, if Obama and his friends want to reduce the number of guns being sold and carried publically in this country they should resign from politics.

Then there is this which, with a little editing, could be put in a tweet with good effect on certain occasions:

Permit holders on rare occasion violate the law. But in order to truly appreciate how incredibly rare those problems are one needs to remember that there are over 12.8 million permit holders in the US. Indeed, it is impossible to think of any other group in the US who is anywhere near as law-­-abiding.

One of the best ways to change the culture is to normalize a behavior. The anti-gun people have been trying to convince others we are “extremists” for decades. We are rapidly being able to turn the tables on them.

A couple weeks ago a female coworker told me, wide eyed and with an incredulous tone as if he were crazy, “My dad told I should get a concealed weapons permit!” I responded that another woman we both knew applied for one a week or so previously. Her attitude immediately became subdued and she didn’t continue the “crazy dad” attitude. Last week she told me about some guy in our building who scares her. He stares at her when she is around. She then told me she going to get a concealed pistol license and asked how to go about it. Today I offered to take her to the range at lunch time. She agreed but we haven’t gone yet.

That’s one way to victory. There is another path to culture change in the report I have been quoting above.

The concealed carry permit numbers for all states are included in the report. Alabama has the most with 12.64%. I’m most interested in Washington State, which has 8.83%, and Idaho with a 8.62% rate but we can mine more out of this paper.

The lowest permit rate in the top 26 states is North Carolina where the rate is 5.47%. So when someone expresses concern about people discretely carrying firearms in public you can tell them, “If you live in most states the odds are that at least one in 20 and perhaps as high as one in eight people you meet in public has a permit to carry. How many people did you see in public today?”

In other words the changing concealed carry culture can change the culture further by pointing out how normal it is to carry firearms in public.

But perhaps the strangest indicator the culture is changing I have seen came in the form of an email today. In part it said, “It seems like shooting like you do would be quite a rush. Does that extra adrenaline carry over into the realm of subsequent sex?

I invited them to the range with me to get some free coaching and see for themselves.

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43 thoughts on “Culture changing concealed carry

  1. My mothers CCW permit arrived this week. And it’s not like DE is a simple shall issue state…..

    When my blog was new she was an anti who didn’t want a gun in the house, carried around her, etc. etc. now she has her gun and a permit 🙂

    • As a resident, I can tell you my reasons for not getting one. You may or may not agree with them.

      1: Because of the many restrictions on where carry is allowed, I simply don’t want to be bothered with having to constantly take my sidearm off and store it, then put it back on again. And I have to go on school grounds every day to drop off and pick up my boy.

      2: The fact that you have a permit is tied to your vehicle registration. With the proliferation of plate readers on police cars, a drive to visit my friends in places like Maryland becomes a potential danger because a simple automatic cross check to the database could lead to a stop and forced search.

      • In NH, the CC permit database is secret by law. That’s a good thing for other states to follow (until they adopt Constitutional Carry which is of course the better answer).

      • It turns out that CA keeps track of residents with out-of-state carry permits, and adds that info to either plate and/or DL databases.
        Get stopped for a traffic violation, and one of the first questions is whether you have a gun with you. In fact, somewhere CA lists these permits by the issuing state, to the CA county of residence, for total numbers. More out-of-state permits here than CA issued.
        They should get a clue. If nothing else, lots of money left on the table for all those non-issued home state permits.

        • Calif resident here and long time CCW (pushing 20 years). Over the years I’ve been stopped a few times and on one or two occasions (but not every) I’ve been asked if I had a gun on me.

          Interestingly on one occasion I did hear over the officers radio the words “Multiple firearms”. So I’ve always suspected they pass on that info. In the rural county that I live in it has never been a problem one way or another.

      • In North Carolina, the permit is not tied to your vehicle registration. It is, however, tied to your drivers license. Concerning your other reason for not having a permit, there are very few places you cannot carry. The prohibited carry areas were modified over the past few years, and were greatly opened up. Almost every place prohibited now are government buildings. Also, you having a weapon in your car while dropping a child off at school is no issue unless you exit the vehicle with the weapon. This also was addressed about two years ago.

        http://www.ncdoj.gov/getdoc/4e0e522f-f314-41d1-b9c7-d68b382bfcb2/Copy-of-Concealed-Handgun-Chart-Prohibited-Carry-A.aspx

      • Also, if you think a vehicle search is that easy, you need to brush up on constitutional law. The fact that you have a permit is not probable cause for a vehicle search. You would either have to agree to the search, or them have a search warrant. And once again, the fact that you have a permit is not probable cause to get a search warrant. Furthermore, you cannot be held on the side of the road while a search warrant is obtained. Please read about investigative detention and other search rights. These are your rights, and you should know them inside and out. A lot of law enforcement assumes that you do not know your rights, and unfortunately they are right far too many times.

        • Well when one knows your rights the officer just lies and does what he like without any reprocussions. You lie to the police you go to jail. Police lie to you they go home. Nice.

    • Agreed. There are too many “Blue” sections in a predominately “Red” state.

    • NC has OC, no permit needed. Nobody really cared for the time that I was there, beyond curious questions. Might be part of the reason for the lower rate.

      • Kindly provide me with the general statute allowing it. I’m not saying that most people have an issue. But the few that do can complain and potentially have the open carrier charged with going armed to the terror of the people.

  2. Wikipedia states this interesting statistic: In a Williams Institute review based on an June–September 2012 Gallup poll, approximately 3.4 percent of American adults identify themselves as being LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender).[2] An earlier report published in April 2011 by the Williams Institute estimated that 3.8 percent of Americans identified as gay/lesbian, bisexual, or transgender: 1.7 percent as lesbian or gay, 1.8 percent as bisexual, and 0.3 percent as transgender.[3]

    So, concealed carriers, who represent a fraction of total firearms owners, are at worst, on a par with the population of LBGT persons in the US. Yet, look at what the LGBT community has accomplished with respect to pushing forward their civil rights. We’re doing a lot right, but there must be something we’re missing to not be able to effect the sweeping changes made by other groups.

    • I’m trans, a veteran, have a CHL carry daily, and have paid for training/firearms/accessories for friends in the LGBT community (so basically a personified statistical anomaly). The gun issue more than any other is where I’m gaining ground and changing minds. Once you’ve got the gun and the license, the responsibility and culture and mindset seep in alot easier, the explosive interest in the LGBT community in firearms has me almost convinced it’s not a lost cause.

    • I don’t blame you; studied ignorance requires effort to maintain. Who knows what might happen to you if you kept an open mind?

    • I read John Lott and became convinced that carrying a gun might be a good idea. Then I read “A Nation of Cowards” by Jeff Snyder, and became convinced that carrying a gun is a moral duty.

  3. You shouldn’t deny Lott and his co-authors their SSRN downloads, that’s an important currency in their realm, here’s the direct link.

    WRT to LGBLT numbers vs. concealed carriers, note that few can legally carry in our most populous state of California, and probably fewer still in the 4th most populous New York. None in New Jersey at 11th or Maryland at 19th, and few in Massachusetts at 15th.

    More and more we’re going to be using Civil War era style rhetoric about a nation “half slave and half free”, especially if, as expected, Peruta v. San Diego is reversed en banc by the 9th Circuit and the Supremes continue to deny cert to appeals (that would be the last possible one, not counting D.C. where the courts are slow rolling enforcing Heller).

    • Half slave and half free? Exactly right!

      That is an idea I’ve also had about gun-rights, but it encompasses much more than just carry rights. Blue states which already had restrictive gun-control laws before Obama, are now on a jihad against the poor gun-owners within their jurisdictions. Often this persecution flies below the radar because it is individual cities of those Blue states which are taking the lead. Such as the magazine-confiscation laws of San Francisco and Los Angeles.

      Even Illinois, which was a remarkable case where the Federal courts actually acted post-‘McDonald v Chicago’ to expand carry rights, has succeeded in cracking down on other gun rights. Like the spread in Illinois of the rifle&magazine confiscation laws such as that by the City of Highland Park.

  4. Recent stats on South Carolina CWP numbers.
    State Population Estimate 2015:
    3,539,993 Age 21 and over.
    277,421 Active Permits as of 2/8/2016 (I asked SLED)
    7.8% of South Carolina residents have a CWP.
    Horry County Population Estimate 2015:
    201,867 Age 21 and over.
    21,620 Active Permits as of 2/8/2016 (I asked SLED)
    14,616 Male – 67.6%
    7004 Female – 32.4%
    10.7% of Horry County (where I live) residents have a CWP

  5. As a North Carolina native son, with brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews by the dozens still living there, I can tell you with absolute certainty that the number of people regularly carrying concealed handguns in that state far exceeds the number of concealed carry licensees. Just sayin’.

    • And how many people have multiple licenses in multiple states? Many people get Utah and Florida permits but don’t live there.

      • You’re in favor of national reciprocity then?
        Some people have to travel through slave states.

        • National reciprocity is what the Constitution requires. (“Full faith and credit…”)

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    • There is no law in NC giving you lawful open carry and some municipalities have laws against it. There is an off chance you could be charged with going armed to the terror of the public if one or more people complain, though that is very rarely charged.

  8. for the record:

    Concealed Carry Permit Holders are One Third as Likely to Commit Murder as Police Officers
    http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2013/10/concealed-carry-permit-holders-are-one.html

    An Analysis of the Arrest Rate of Texas Concealed Handgun License Holders
    as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population,” William E.
    Sturdevant, September 1, 2000; Florida Department of Justice statistics,
    1998; Florida Department of State,

    http://concealedguns.procon.org/sourcefiles/sturdevant.pdf

    From page 23 of the report:

    6.3.3.1 Males
    The average male Texan who is 21 years or older is 7.9 times more likely to be arrested for the violent crimes of murder, rape, robbery, and assault than the average male CHL holder. The average male Texan who is 21 years or older is 20 times more likely to be arrested for committing a non-violent crime than the average male CHL holder.

    Looking at violent crimes individually, the average male Texan who is 21 years or older is 1.9 times (rate of 9.0 v. 4.8) more likely to be arrested for murder; 68 times (rate of 25 v. 0.4) more likely to be arrested for rape; 49 times (rate of 45 v. 0.9) more likely to be arrested for robbery; 3.2 times (rate of 207 v. 64) more likely to be arrested for aggravated assault; and 11 times (rate of 914 v. 82) more likely to be arrested for other assaults than the average male CHL holder.

    No male Texas CHL holder was arrested for negligent manslaughter during the 1996 through 1999 period.

    6.3.3.2 Females
    The average female Texan who is 21 years or older is 7.5 times more likely to be arrested for the violent crimes of murder and assault than the average female CHL holder. The average female Texan who is 21 years or older is 16 times more likely to be arrested for committing a nonviolent crime than the average female CHL holder.

    Looking at violent crimes individually, the average female Texan who is 21 years or older is 1.7 times (rate of 1.3 v. 0.7) more likely to be arrested for murder; 2.2 times (rate of 48 v. 22) more likely to be arrested for aggravated assault; and 20 times (rate of 180 v. 9) more likely to be arrested for other assaults than the average female CHL holder.

    No female Texas CHL holder has arrested for negligent manslaughter, rape, or robbery during the 1996 through 1999 period.


    7 CONCLUSIONS:

    7.1.1 Arrest data for Texas CHL holders indicate that violent crime is not a consequence of handgun ownership or possession.

    7.1.2 The total population of Texas has an arrest rate for violent crime that is 5.3 times higher than Texas CHL holders, based upon data from 1996 – 1999.

    7.2.1 Arrest data for Texas CHL holders indicate that murder and non-negligent manslaughter is not a consequence of handgun ownership or possession….


    7.5.2 The total population of Texas has an arrest rate for robbery that is 48 times higher than Texas CHL holders, based upon data from 1996 – 1999.


    7.9.1 Less than two percent (1.9%) of the arrests of CHL holders for violent crimes that possibly involve weapons (murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault) were classified as “family violence” crimes.


    7.10.2 The total population of Texas has an arrest rate for non-violent crime that is 14 times higher than Texas CHL holders, based upon data from 1996 – 1999.

    from:
    Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report,” 1998; Texas
    Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported in San
    Antonio Express-News, September 2000; Texas Department of Corrections data,
    1996-2000, compiled by the Texas State Rifle Association

    The rate that concealed carry permit holders are now losing their permits for gun related violations

    Between, October 1, 1987, and November 30, 2008, Florida issued permits to 1,439,446 people, many of whom have had their permits renewed multiple times. Only 166 had their permits revoked for any type of firearms related violation – about 0.01 percent. I was just looking up the new numbers. Updating those numbers to January 31, 2010, Florida has now issued permits to 1,704,624 people. The number who have had their permits revoked has risen to just 167. In 14 months, just one person with a Florida permit has lost his permit for a fire arms related violation. There are currently 692,621 valid permits. That is a revocation rate of 0.00014 percent.

    http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2010/02/rate-that-concealed-carry-permit.html

    In North Carolina, one of only a handful of states that reveals the identities of permit holders, 200 of the 240,000 concealed carriers (.08 percent) committed felonies of all types, including eight shooting deaths, in the five-year period ending in 2011. This compares with about 2.5 percent of voting-age Americans who have a felony rap sheet, according to The Sentencing Project.

    http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-big-change-in-views-on-concealed.html

    Quinnipiac Study: Concealed Carry Results in Fewer Murders

    “These results suggest that restrictive concealed weapons laws may cause an
    increase in gun-related murders at the state level.”

    1.3.2014 by Bradford Thomas

    In what will certainly be gun control advocates’ new least favorite study,
    Quinnipiac University’s Mark Gius found not only that states with
    restrictive concealed weapons laws had higher gun-related murder rates, but
    that assault weapons bans had no significant impact on murder rates at the
    state level.

    The study by economist Mark Gius, published in Applied Economics Letters,
    sought to “determine the effects of state-level assault weapons bans and
    concealed weapons laws on state murder rates,” using extensive data from a
    thirty-year period, 1980-2009. In the abstract for the study, Gius sums up
    the findings:

    Using data for the period 1980 to 2009 and controlling for state and year
    fixed effects, the results of the present study suggest that states with
    restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related
    murder rates than other states. It was also found that assault weapons bans
    did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level. These results
    suggest that restrictive concealed weapons laws may cause an increase in
    gun-related murders at the state level.

    Gius notes that these results are consistent with previous research,
    specifically citing the work by John R. Lott and David B. Mustard.

    http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/quinnipiac-study-concealed-carry-results-fewer-murders

    link to study
    http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13504851.2013.854294

    • “Felonies committed within a five year period” shouldn’t be compared to “people with a felony conviction” for obvious reasons. That trips my propaganda detector.

  9. I am glad to see concealed carry on the rise, and Constitutional Carry in most states is the logical end point.

    Whenever someone must buy a license or pay a fee to exercise a right, then it is something less than a right. It is in fact a mere privilege, subject to the whim of petty bureaucrats. Fundamental rights are not abstract tokens that are given or sold by other men. They are in fact primary liberties bestowed upon us by God, our maker. Rights are not substantially secured by asking, “Mother may I?” of any government agency. Rights are more properly demanded or boldly seized and then conspicuously exercised regularly. This secures the liberties that have legitimately belonged to us since birth. If need be, lost rights can and must be restored through proscriptive use. If you live in a land where your rights have been marginalized into privileges, then it is either time to change your government, or to change your address. Much like a muscle that atrophies with disuse, any right that goes unexercised for many years devolves into a privilege, and eventually can even be redefined as a crime.

    • Excellent – I’m going to copy paste this and use it frequently. Some things are fundamentally true and obvious they don’t get stated. The Constitution didn’t give this to us, it just acknowledged the basic human right that exists prior to and even after the formation of governments by contract, i.e. constitutions.

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  11. I read somewhere (can’t find it now) that while some conceal carry permit holders illegally use their firearm, police illegally injure more people per year even though CCW holders vastly out number the police.

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  13. Concealed carry permits are a good thing! I am not against constitutional carry, I carry every day! Getting a permit/license is a good thing because it is something you have to work for, and you don’t want it to be taken away. Younger folks need to go through the process to learn that it is not a privilege, but a responsibility. I had my permit for a few years before I started carrying daily. I needed to have the time to understand the responsibility, and to be sure that I wasn’t going to lose my mind and shoot the dumb jerk that just cut me off. Agree, or disagree, there are people that need to grow up a bit before they start running around with a weapon.
    Yes there needs to be a federal concealed carry law, it can be administrated by the state you live in, but it needs to be federal. We need to be able to carry anywhere we go, Post Office, Hospital, Schools, Universities etc… so we can protect ourselves and our children.
    Keep your guns locked up when not in use and keep them out of the hands of children and those not mentally capable of having firearms.

    • No, actually, there needs to be nationwide Constitutional Carry. Nothing less is constitutional.

      Your point about training is fine, but it doesn’t justify a permit process, much less one where the authorities have discretion to deny the permit at will, or have the ability to put your name out to the world.

      BTW, training is required in some states but not all. NH has a “must issue” process that is designed to verify you’re not a bad person, for which the authorities have a strictly limited time span. It imposes no other requirements, and it specifically forbids any local officials attempting to make up stuff on their own. (For example, some towns attempted to impose a fingerprint requirement, but went down in flames when it was pointed out that the attempt was flat out illegal and exposed the authorities to personal liability for the violation.)

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