Antigun politicians, acting with an urgency they don’t seem to have for real problems like rampant retail theft and homelessness, passed laws in five states that made concealed carry permits pointless by banning carry at almost every relevant public place. Those laws immediately faced lawsuits (including the one CRPA is working on challenging California’s law), and all are partially enjoined to varying degrees as the litigation proceeds.
Yet something funny happened after 2022. Instead of the proverbial “blood in the streets” that was predicted, the national homicide rate dropped. This happened everywhere; in the antigun states forced to issue carry permits for the first time, in pro-gun states like Ohio and Florida which went further and adopted “constitutional carry” (meaning no permit is required to carry a gun if you can legally own one), and even in individual cities like Philadelphia that began issuing permits more liberally as a result of the litigation.
Miami even had its lowest year for homicides since it began keeping track of them in the 1940s. So why were the antigun politicians and their allies in the gun control industry so hilariously wrong? Why didn’t every argument turn into a shootout? Why didn’t our homicide rate spike?
In short: because Americans with concealed carry permits almost never commit crimes.
If an individual goes through the process required to get a permit in order to carry a firearm legally, they are demonstrating a tremendous predisposition to following the law and thus aren’t likely to commit a crime. On the other end of the spectrum, the raw number of criminals who were carrying likely didn’t budge. They were carrying illegally before Bruen anyway and continued to do so afterwards, so the adoption of constitutional carry in some states also didn’t change anything (besides making it less of a hassle to exercise a constitutional right for the law-abiding).
All of this is very intuitive and squares with common sense. But we need not only rely on common sense as there’s extensive data to prove it. Several states keep track of carry permitting and crimes committed by those with permits, and they all show just how rare it is for someone with such a permit to commit violent crimes.
State-level data proves those issued CCW permits rarely commit crimes.
Part of what was amusing about politicians predicting the Bruen decision would cause an increase in violence was that we had seen this movie before, several decades ago.
From the early 20th century until the 1980s, only a handful of states permitted carrying concealed firearms by regular citizens in an expansive sense. But with Florida becoming by far the largest state to expand the right to carry in 1987, a media firestorm ensued. Gun control activists insisted that the state would devolve into a sort of wild west.
Did Florida come apart at the seams with every disagreement turning into the O.K. Corral? Not at all, according to the data. Florida’s homicide rate actually fell following the passage of its “shall-issue” gun carry law. In 1987, it had 11.4 murders per 100,000 people. But, by the start of the new century, the rate had been cut to 5.6 per 100,000.
While we can’t conclude the carry law caused murder rate in Florida to drop, it’s safe to say that it certainly didn’t cause it to increase, and the decline refuted opponents’ predictions of dire consequences.
“There are lots of people, including myself, who thought things would be a lot worse as far as that particular situation [carry reform] is concerned,” Florida Representative Ronald A. Silver (D), who opposed the law, said in 1990. “I’m happy to say they’re not.”
John Fuller, general counsel for the Florida Sheriffs Associated, added, “I haven’t seen where we have had any instance of persons with permits causing violent crimes, and I’m constantly on the lookout.” See Clayton E. Cramer & David B. Kopel, “Shall Issue”: The New Wave of Concealed Handgun Permit Laws, 62 Tenn. L. Rev. 679, 692-93 (1995).
That trend continues to this day in Florida. As of October 2024, Florida had issued 6,183,369 CCW permits since October 1, 1987. Of those, 2,451,866 are still active today. In that 37-year period, only 20,796 permits have been revoked without being reinstated, or roughly three-tenths of one percent of the total issued.
Texas provides another example. 2020 was the last complete year where permits were issued before Texas passed permitless, or “constitutional,” carry. That year, Texas had 1,626,242 active concealed handgun license holders. That same year, 573 people with those licenses did something that caused the state to revoke them. That’s just 0.03% of the total amount of people with licenses.
Overall in 2020, Texas license holders were 5.7% of the state’s population, yet they were convicted of just 0.43% of the state’s serious crimes. There were 114 convictions for license holders out of 26,304 convictions for the state as a whole. And many of the offenses listed do not involve a firearm at all.
The trend of law-abiding carry permit holders isn’t limited to red states. The Chicago Tribune reported
in 2020 on all known uses of a gun (shootings or threats) by the 315,000 people in Illinois with carry permits. The Tribune found just 71 incidents between 2014 and 2020. And many incidents listed weren’t crimes, but legitimate self-defense uses. For instance . . .
Elvis Garcia, 39, was talking outside with neighbors ages 20 and 27. Two men drove up and started shooting at them; all three were hit. Garcia, a CCL holder, returned fire, killing Michael Portis, 17. Both Garcia and Portis died from their wounds. The second man who fired at the three neighbors later was arrested.
But even if all 71 incidents were crimes, that would come out to carry permit holders in Illinois having a two one-hundredths of a percent chance of committing a crime using a gun at any point in the six-year period the Tribune examined.
Minnesota’s carry permit holders are in a unique position as every crime they commit, whether or not a firearm was involved, is meticulously tracked and reported by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). This level of oversight provides an unparalleled dataset, allowing for the most direct comparison between the criminal activity rates of permit holders and the general population.
In 2023, the BCA’s Uniform Crime Report showed that for crimes against persons, the general population had a rate of 856.9 per 100,000 people, while the BCA’s Permit to Carry Report shows permit holders had a much lower rate of 89.2 per 100,000—nearly 10 times lower. When isolating instances where the permit holder had a firearm during the offense, the rate plummets to 8.6 per 100,000. This makes permit holders almost 100 times less likely to commit crimes against persons while carrying a firearm.
Similarly, for crimes against property, the general population had a rate of 2,747.2 per 100,000 people, while permit holders had a significantly lower rate of 44.3 per 100,000—a difference of more than 60 times. When focusing on cases where the permit holder was carrying a firearm, the rate drops to an astonishing 0.9 per 100,000, making permit holders 3,000 times less likely to commit property crimes while carrying.
Courts, as well as the RAND organization, have recognized that CCW permit holders are an overwhelmingly law-abiding demographic.
Similar data exists for many other states and data to the contrary is nonexistent. As a result, several courts have recognized the lack of evidence supporting efforts to tie those lawfully carrying firearms for self-defense to increased criminality. “[D]espite ample opportunity for an evidentiary hearing, the State has failed to offer any evidence that law-abiding responsible citizens who carry firearms in public for self-defense are responsible for an increase in gun violence.” Koons v. Platkin, 673 F. Supp. 3d 515, 577 (D.N.J. 2023). “Simply put, CCW permitholders are not the gun wielders legislators should fear.” May v. Bonta, No. 23-cv-01696, 2023 WL 8946212, at *19 (C.D. Cal. Dec. 20, 2023). “[T]he vast majority of conceal carry permit holders are law abiding.” Wolford v. Lopez, 686 F. Supp. 3d 1034, 1076 (D. Haw. 2023).
At least one research organization that typically argues for more gun control, RAND, has recognized the same.
[E]vidence generally shows that, as a group, license holders are particularly law abiding and rarely are convicted for violent crimes.
In the case I work on for CRPA (May v. Bonta), what was especially striking is that the California DOJ didn’t even try to rebut the data we presented. They effectively conceded that those with carry permits are not a criminal threat, even as they tried to treat them like lepers by defending a law that banned them from most public places while carrying.
The Violence Policy Center attempts to smear those with carry permits as ‘killers,’ but ends up further proving how rare it is for them to commit crimes.
The only real effort to make an argument that those with carrying permits are a uniquely violent bunch comes from the antigun Violence Policy Center in a website they call Concealed Carry Killers. The website compiles examples of those with carry permits who have killed someone, labels them “killers,” and uses them as an argument against permissive carry laws.
But according to the website itself, of the 2,512 total people who were purportedly killed by “concealed carry killers” from May 2007 to January 2024, over 1,500 were suicide victims who killed no one but themselves:
Source: https://concealedcarrykillers.org/concealed-carry-killers-background/
The Violence Policy Center’s website thus exploits the deaths of those who died by suicide to inflate its count in service of its antigun goals. Worse yet, it disparages their memory by branding them as “killers,” no different than criminals who intentionally harm others.
They are not the same and their deaths don’t support the notion that concealed carry permit holders present a grave risk to the public at large. Moreover, the data doesn’t say where these deaths took place. Presumably, the overwhelming majority of those who died by suicide died in their own homes. This makes much of the data entirely irrelevant to concerns about carrying firearms in public places by those with permits.
In any case, what’s most remarkable is that the “Concealed Carry Killers” data actually supports the argument that Americans with carry permits are overwhelmingly law-abiding. After removing the 1,505 suicide victims from the data, 1,007 total people killed by “concealed carry killers” remain. Only 544 of these are killings with resulting convictions. The rest are a mix of unintentional shootings, murder-suicides, claimed self-defense shootings, and cases that are still under investigation. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that all 1,007 cases involved cold-blooded killers.
From May 2007 to January 2024, 1,007 killings across nearly 16 years is an average of about 63 killings per year. To put that figure in its proper context, you have to compare it to the number of Americans who lawfully carry firearms. According to data from the University of Washington, “in 2019 approximately 16 million adult handgun owners had carried a loaded handgun on their person in the past month.” According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, the number has risen to 22 million as of 2022.
Going with the lower 2019 figure for the sake of argument, if about 16 million Americans legally carry, and 63 killings result per year, that’s an annual homicide rate of around 0.39 per 100,000 people. According to the CDC, the overall national homicide rate was 7.5 per 100,000 people in 2022.
In other words, even according to the questionable “Concealed Carry Killers” data, and making every assumption in the Violence Policy Center’s favor, Americans who legally carry firearms are about 19 times less likely to commit homicide than the general population. If they were their own country, it would be a safer country than Switzerland. This hardly supports claims that such persons are so uniquely dangerous that they must be disarmed in most places.
Conclusion: antigun politicians should quit harassing people with concealed carry permits as they are clearly not the problem. If the goal is reduced crime, passing laws harassing those with permits simply doesn’t make sense.
Politicians determined to continue to attack this group with endless anti-carry legislation are dangerously ignorant of the plentiful data that’s available. Or much worse, they’re aware of the data and support anti-carry laws anyway, as their goal isn’t increased safety, but rather punishment of a politically disfavored group that generally doesn’t vote for them.
Either way, their efforts must be defeated. Americans should feel reassured that millions of their countrymen choose to exercise their right to carry legally and responsibly, and they should oppose legislative efforts to roll back that right. Instead of trying to disarm people who rarely commit crimes anyway (and instead often save the day), our politicians should pass laws like concealed carry reciprocity so that Americans with carry permits can carry in any state they visit.
To support more work like this in addition to our litigation efforts, please become a member and/or donate to CRPA.
Konstadinos Moros is an Associate Attorney with Michel & Associates, a law firm in Long Beach that regularly represents the California Rifle & Pistol Association (CRPA) in its litigation efforts to restore the Second Amendment in California. You can find him on his Twitter handle @MorosKostas. To donate to CRPA or become a member, visit https://crpa.org/.
This post was adapted by SNW from a tweet posted by Konstadinos Moros.
Trust and Respect. The left simply does not Trust responsible good Americans who own firearms.
Also the left does not have any respect for responsible good Americans who carry or want to carry concealed.
Politicians with this mindset also display their disdain for the 2nd Amendment and the Constitution in general.
The aforementioned politicians should be removed from office since they have openly made it clear they do not support the Constitution and they are not truly serving We The People.
Hush,
Exactly. And further, we should never forget that there are plenty of politicians who have been
bought and paid forheavily influenced by foreign nations actively undermining our economy, social fabric, and Constitution. Politicians who are, in effect, foreign agents. (a recent VP candidate, for example).LifeSavor
Precisely, and these same politicians of whom you speak have the audacity to attack President Trump and his supporters.
These are things We the People should never forget and then vote accordingly.
So perhaps the title should be, “… those who carry firearms legally …”
But anyway. Yes, it’s a matter of trust of and respect for the citizenry.