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Study shows concealed handgun permits soared during pandemic, record year-over-year increase

A new study shows that the number of concealed handgun permits soared in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic and has increased over 10% since the end of last year.

According to a study conducted by the Crime Prevention Research Center, the number of concealed handgun permits surged to 21.52 million in 2020, a 48% increase since 2016 and a 10.5% increase from the same time last year.

The number of permit holders grew by a record 2 million last year which is 200,000 more than the previous record set in 2017, the study says, and adds that 8.3% of American adults have permits.

"Permit holders are extremely law-abiding," the study says. "In Florida and Texas, permit holders are convicted of firearms related violations at one-twelfth of the rate at which police officers are convicted."

Continued great news on the concealed carry front. That's a ton of new people getting licenses!!

"In Texas, black females saw a 6.3 times greater percentage increase in permits than white males from 2002 to 2020,"

"From 2015 to 2020/2021, in the four states that provide data by race over that time period, the number of Asian people with permits increased 93.2% faster than the number of whites with permits. Blacks appear to be the group that has experienced the largest increase in permitted concealed carry, growing 135.7% faster than whites."

Now we need to make sure they get involved and join Pro-2A groups as well

Thanks for posting that! Very topical: I'm in an email...er, discussion with a friend in Northern California who is--surprise!--very anti-carry. I thought this note in the article was also interesting in that regard:

"These numbers are particularly topical given that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the concealed carry case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association V. Corlett in November," the study states. "That case will determine whether those requesting permits need to provide a ‘proper cause’ for obtaining a permit. The eight states with that rule have issued permits to only 1.24% of their adult population. If the "proper cause" regulation were to be overturned, the study suggests that 2.3 million more permits could be issued in the affected states.

Six states now have over 1 million permit holders: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Florida is the first state to have over 2.5 million permits.

Florida is the state that has issued the most concealed carry permits at 2.52 million, followed by Texas with 1.71 million and Pennsylvania with 1.49 million.

Table 2 from the paper lists, by state, the percentage of the adult population with a concealed carry permit. What's a little shocking and disappointing to me is that Texas comes in at number 29 out of 51 (District of Columbia is included). Of the 28 states that are ahead of Texas in percentage of licensees, 9 do not require a permit to carry within the state. Texas shows 7.81%. The top 5 states: Alabama, 32.06%; Indiana, 21.57%; Iowa, 16.54%; Georgia, 15.43%; and Pennsylvania, 14.35%.

Evidently 14 states, with 9.2 million license holders among them, reported license data by gender. Women averaged 28.3% of all license holders in those states, only a modest increase from 2020. We definitely have more work to do there, also. The numbers will always likely skew toward males, but in 2021 it's hard to fathom that female license holders number less than 39.5% of their male counterparts. Tennessee and Oklahoma seem to have the highest percentages of women permit holders with 34.6% and 33.1% respectively. Texas is at 29.2%.

Another highlight from the paper:

"Even given the low conviction rate for police, concealed carry permit holders are even more law-abiding than police.... Of the 26,304 total convictions in the Texas DPS 2020 report, only 114 — or 0.43 percent — were convictions of LTC holders, a conviction rate of 6.7 per 100,000. For Texas, permit revocations for firearms related violations amounted to 21 or 0.0012% of permit holders."

I had a number of friends that built custom homes with built in safes and gone on shopping sprees for firearms in 2019 and 2020. All of them as well as, my uncles, aunts and other people of color that I have spoken with will have nothing too do with 2A organizations. There is a distrust with people of color , due to a long history of mistreatment. I have tried for 6 years to get more people of color to join our club or even to just come shoot. I do all I can to show safe firearm handling, make good choices for holsters and not be the elephant in the room while carrying in public. We learned from the Tuskegee syphilis study to never trust the government.

Historically Texas has been one of the more expensive licenses and New Hampshire had highest percentage of licenses. But that has changed. The Texas license is now more affordable and both states have constitutional carry. It will be interesting to see how Texas licensing moves forward under constitutional carry.

Considering the expansion of constitutional carry, the sharp rise in concealed handgun permits is even more impressive!

Deitz83 wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 1:21 pm I had a number of friends that built custom homes with built in safes and gone on shopping sprees for firearms in 2019 and 2020. All of them as well as, my uncles, aunts and other people of color that I have spoken with will have nothing too do with 2A organizations. There is a distrust with people of color , due to a long history of mistreatment. I have tried for 6 years to get more people of color to join our club or even to just come shoot. I do all I can to show safe firearm handling, make good choices for holsters and not be the elephant in the room while carrying in public. We learned from the Tuskegee syphilis study to never trust the government.

Trust is a key ingredient in success of every society. That is why it is SO very important for our leaders to be both trustworthy and accountable.

Paladin wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 1:27 pm Trust is a key ingredient in success of every society. That is why it is SO very important for our leaders to be both trustworthy and accountable.

And that is why trust in government is at all time lows..because our leaders are neither trustworthy or accountable.