More than 4,000 people have obtained gun permits from the D.C. police department to carry loaded, concealed firearms on the streets of the nation’s capital, according to data released this month.

Nearly 60 percent of the people approved for concealed carry permits in the last fiscal year reside outside of the District, primarily in Maryland and Virginia.

The thousands of licenses issued in the past three years are in stark contrast to the previous decade in D.C., before a set of court rulings required city officials to loosen restrictive gun laws. Most D.C. residents were not permitted to keep firearms in their homes, let alone carry loaded pistols in public, until a landmark 2008 Supreme Court decision declared an individual right to gun ownership.

The surge in permits comes after a separate ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that struck down a key provision of the city’s law in 2017 that had required residents to show a “good reason” to carry a firearm outside the home.

In the months after the court decision, the police department began approving hundreds of permits. Before the decision, there were only 123 active licenses, and D.C. police denied 77 percent of applicants for failing to provide the required “good reason.”

D.C. police have since signed off on 4,808 permits, according to data the department provided March 5 to Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who chairs the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety. Permits expire after two years, and there are currently 4,147 active license-holders, according to the department’s records division.

Allen said he is concerned that the large number of people potentially carrying legal firearms in public puts D.C. police officers in a difficult position to distinguish between someone concealing a legal gun and someone hiding an illegal firearm.