{"id":105889,"date":"2024-11-30T18:27:06","date_gmt":"2024-12-01T00:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=105889"},"modified":"2024-11-30T18:35:05","modified_gmt":"2024-12-01T00:35:05","slug":"105889","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=105889","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Data Proves Conclusively That Those Who Carry Firearms Almost Never Commit Crimes.<\/a><\/p>\n

When the landmark\u00a0Bruen\u00a0<\/a><\/em>ruling was first published in June of 2022, politicians in the few remaining holdout states that didn\u2019t issue concealed carry permits to regular citizens had a collective meltdown. <\/span><\/p>\n

New York Governor Kathy Hochul\u00a0called it\u00a0<\/a>\u201coutrageous,\u201d California Governor Gavin Newsom\u00a0said\u00a0<\/a><\/span>it was a \u201cradical decision,\u201d and New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin\u00a0described it as <\/a><\/span>\u201cbad constitutional law and even worse for public safety.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gun control groups were also apoplectic.\u00a0Giffords claimed\u00a0<\/a>the ruling would would \u201cescalate gun violence,\u201d \u201cspur unlawful militia activity,\u201d \u201cembolden those inclined to vigilante justice,\u201d \u201cincrease violence at protests,\u201d and cause \u201cmore domestic violence and hate crimes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

Antigun groups like Giffords, which now argue in court that Bruen allows all their favored gun control laws, thoroughly condemned the ruling when it was published.<\/em><\/p>\n

Antigun politicians, acting with an urgency they don\u2019t seem to have for real problems like rampant retail theft and homelessness, passed laws in five states<\/a>\u00a0that made concealed carry permits pointless by banning carry at almost every relevant public place. Those laws immediately faced lawsuits (including the one\u00a0CRPA is working on\u00a0<\/span><\/a>challenging California\u2019s law), and all are partially enjoined to varying degrees as the litigation proceeds.<\/p>\n

Yet something funny happened after 2022. Instead of the proverbial \u201cblood in the streets\u201d that was predicted, the\u00a0national homicide rate\u00a0dropped<\/em><\/span><\/a>.\u00a0This 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 \u201cconstitutional carry\u201d (meaning no permit is required to carry a gun if you can legally own one), and even in individual cities\u00a0like Philadelphia\u00a0<\/span><\/a>that began issuing permits more liberally as a result of the litigation.<\/p>\n

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Philadelphia\u2019s homicides are falling sharply as the lockdown-era crimewave recedes. Source:\u00a0https:\/\/www.phillypolice.com\/crimestats<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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\u2019t every argument turn into a shootout? Why didn\u2019t our homicide rate spike?<\/p>\n

In short:\u00a0because Americans with concealed carry permits almost never commit crimes<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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\u2019t likely to commit a crime. On the other end of the spectrum, the raw number of criminals who were carrying likely didn\u2019t budge. They were carrying illegally before Bruen<\/em>\u00a0anyway and continued to do so afterwards, so the adoption of constitutional carry in some states also didn\u2019t change anything (besides making it less of a hassle to exercise a constitutional right for the law-abiding).<\/p>\n

All of this is very intuitive and squares with common sense. But we need not only rely on common sense as there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

State-level data proves those issued CCW permits rarely commit crimes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Part of what was amusing about politicians predicting the\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0decision would cause an increase in violence was that we had seen this movie before, several decades ago.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Did Florida come apart at the seams with every disagreement turning into the O.K. Corral? Not at all, according to the data. Florida\u2019s homicide rate actually fell following the passage of its \u201cshall-issue\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

The adoption of shall-issue permitting in 1987 did not cause Florida\u2019s murder rate to increase. Source:\u00a0https:\/\/www.flsheriffs.org\/uploads\/FLCrimeDropStudy_Bales4_15_12.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

While we can\u2019t conclude the carry law caused murder rate in Florida to drop, it\u2019s safe to say that it certainly didn\u2019t cause it to increase, and the decline refuted opponents\u2019 predictions of dire consequences.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are lots of people, including myself, who thought things would be a lot worse as far as that particular situation [carry reform] is concerned,\u201d Florida Representative Ronald A. Silver (D), who opposed the law, said in 1990. \u201cI\u2019m happy to say they\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Fuller, general counsel for the Florida Sheriffs Associated, added, \u201cI haven\u2019t seen where we have had any instance of persons with permits causing violent crimes, and I\u2019m constantly on the lookout.\u201d See\u00a0Clayton E. Cramer & David B. Kopel, \u201cShall Issue\u201d: The New Wave of Concealed Handgun Permit Laws, 62 Tenn. L. Rev. 679, 692-93 (1995).<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

That trend continues to this day in Florida. As of\u00a0October 2024<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

Texas provides another example. 2020 was\u00a0the last complete year<\/a>\u00a0where permits were issued before Texas passed permitless, or \u201cconstitutional,\u201d 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\u2019s just 0.03% of the total amount of people with licenses.<\/p>\n

Overall in 2020, Texas license holders were 5.7% of the state\u2019s population, yet they were convicted of just 0.43% of the state\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The trend of law-abiding carry permit holders isn\u2019t limited to red states. The\u00a0Chicago Tribune<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a>
\nin 2020 on all known uses of a gun (shootings or threats) by the 315,000 people in Illinois with carry permits. The\u00a0Tribune<\/em>\u00a0found just 71 incidents between 2014 and 2020. And many incidents listed weren\u2019t crimes, but legitimate self-defense uses. For instance . . .<\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u00a0Tribune<\/em>\u00a0examined.<\/p>\n

Minnesota\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

In 2023,\u00a0the BCA\u2019s Uniform Crime Report<\/a>\u00a0showed that for crimes against persons, the general population had a rate of 856.9 per 100,000 people, while the BCA\u2019s Permit to Carry Report shows permit holders had a much lower rate of 89.2 per 100,000\u2014nearly 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2014a difference of more than 60 times.<\/em>\u00a0When 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.<\/p>\n

Courts, as well as the RAND organization, have recognized that CCW permit holders are an overwhelmingly law-abiding demographic.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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. \u201c[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.\u201d\u00a0Koons v. Platkin<\/em><\/a>, 673 F. Supp. 3d 515, 577 (D.N.J. 2023). \u201cSimply put, CCW permitholders are not the gun wielders legislators should fear.\u201d\u00a0May v. Bonta<\/em>,<\/a>\u00a0No. 23-cv-01696, 2023 WL 8946212, at *19 (C.D. Cal. Dec. 20, 2023). \u201c[T]he vast majority of conceal carry permit holders are law abiding.\u201d\u00a0Wolford v. Lopez<\/em><\/a>, 686 F. Supp. 3d 1034, 1076 (D. Haw. 2023).<\/p>\n

At least one research organization that typically argues for more gun control, RAND,\u00a0has recognized the same<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[E]vidence generally shows that, as a group, license holders are particularly law abiding and rarely are convicted for violent crimes.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the case I work on for CRPA (May v. Bonta<\/em><\/a>), what was especially striking is that the California DOJ didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

The Violence Policy Center attempts to smear those with carry permits as \u2018killers,\u2019 but ends up further proving how rare it is for them to commit crimes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The only real effort to make an argument that those with carrying\u00a0 permits are a uniquely violent bunch comes from the antigun Violence Policy Center in a website they call\u00a0Concealed Carry Killers<\/a>. The website compiles examples of those with carry permits who have killed someone, labels them \u201ckillers,\u201d and uses them as an argument against permissive carry laws.<\/p>\n

But according to the website itself, of the 2,512 total people who were purportedly killed by \u201cconcealed carry killers\u201d from May 2007 to January 2024, over 1,500 were suicide victims who killed no one but themselves:<\/p>\n

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Source:\u00a0https:\/\/concealedcarrykillers.org\/concealed-carry-killers-background\/<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Violence Policy Center\u2019s 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 \u201ckillers,\u201d no different than criminals who intentionally harm others.<\/p>\n

They are not the same and their deaths don\u2019t support the notion that concealed carry permit holders present a grave risk to the public at large. Moreover, the data doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

In any case, what\u2019s most remarkable is that the \u201cConcealed Carry Killers\u201d data\u00a0actually supports<\/em>\u00a0the 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 \u201cconcealed carry killers\u201d 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\u2019s assume that all 1,007 cases involved cold-blooded killers.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0data from the University of Washington<\/a>, \u201cin 2019 approximately 16 million adult handgun owners had carried a loaded handgun on their person in the past month.\u201d According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, the number has risen to 22 million as of 2022.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

In other words, even according to the questionable \u201cConcealed Carry Killers\u201d data, and making every assumption in the Violence Policy Center\u2019s favor, Americans who legally carry firearms are about\u00a019 times less likely<\/strong>\u00a0to 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.<\/p>\n

\"concealed
Bigstock<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\u2019t make sense.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Politicians determined to continue to attack this group with endless anti-carry legislation are dangerously ignorant of the plentiful data that\u2019s available. Or much worse, they\u2019re aware of the data and support anti-carry laws anyway, as their goal isn\u2019t increased safety, but rather punishment of a politically disfavored group that generally doesn\u2019t vote for them.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0often save the day<\/a>), our politicians should pass laws like concealed carry reciprocity so that Americans with carry permits can carry in any state they visit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Data Proves Conclusively That Those Who Carry Firearms Almost Never Commit Crimes. When the landmark\u00a0Bruen\u00a0ruling was first published in June of 2022, politicians in the few remaining holdout states that didn\u2019t issue concealed carry permits to regular citizens had a collective meltdown. New York Governor Kathy Hochul\u00a0called it\u00a0\u201coutrageous,\u201d California Governor Gavin Newsom\u00a0said\u00a0it was a \u201cradical … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rkba","category-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=105889"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105892,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105889\/revisions\/105892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=105889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=105889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=105889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}