The great arming is underway, and that’s a very good thing for our nation, for our culture, and for the relationship between citizen and state.
On Thursday, John Lott and the Crime Prevention Research Center published a comprehensive survey of the growth in concealed-carry permits in the United States. The numbers are stunning — not just in their growth, but in their depth and consequence. Here’s a sampling.
During Barack Obama’s presidency, the number of concealed-carry permit holders increased by a whopping 256 percent. The numbers have increased across multiple demographics, with a higher percentage growth for women than men and for black citizens than white. In eleven states at least 10 percent of the adults possess carry permits. All told, 16.36 million Americans have carry permits, a number that understates the amount of people who carry weapons, since 14 states “have adopted constitutional carry in all or part of the state” — which means that no permit is required for citizens to carry a gun.
At the same time that carry permits have increased at an astonishing rate, violent crime has decreased, and concealed-carry permit holders remain remarkably law-abiding. From 2007 to 2015, murder rates decreased by 12.5 percent and “overall violent crime fell by 18 percent.” At the same time, “the percentage of adults with permits soared by 190 percent.” And yet despite that growth, available data still indicate that permit holders are substantially more law-abiding than the police. For example, using data from Florida and Texas, Lott found that “permit holders are convicted of misdemeanors and felonies at less than a sixth of the rate for police officers.”
by David French
