John Lott has released a new report that has a lot of bad news for the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex. His research shows that 7.14% of Americans now have concealed carry licenses. Incredibly, that number has exploded 273% since 2007. Clearly more and more Americans vote with their wallets when it comes to guns and gun ownership.
Without a doubt, the surge in carry permits further shows Americans continue to embrace the benefits of gun ownership. The trend follows the massive growth in overall gun purchases that took off when President Obama took office.
All of this spells bad news for Shannon Watts, Michael Bloomberg and other gun-grabbing elites on the wrong side of freedom, liberty and civil rights.
Not only that, but the growth sector in license holders isn't among old fat white guys. Women, African-Americans and Asians represent the fastest growing subsets of applicants. After all, you can't abuse a woman who shoots back. Armed blacks experience less discrimination. And armed gays don't get bashed. Most law enforcement officers like carry permit holders, too.
The only areas where permit issuance has slowed is in constitutional carry states where permits are no longer needed.
The Daily Caller covered Lott's report.
The number of concealed carry weapons (CCW) permits is soaring to new levels despite the rabid anti-gun activism following a slew of school shootings over the past year.
Issued CCW permits increased approximately 275 percent over a ten-year period, from 4.6 million permits in 2007 to over 17.25 permits in 2018, according to a study released Friday by the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC). The number has been increasing year over year and is forecast to continue trending upwards.
The most notable demographic increase was found to be among women and minorities. During the aforementioned time period, CCW issuance jumped 111 percent faster for women than for men. Moreover, compared to white individuals, permits for Asian and black individuals spiked 29 percent and 20 percent quicker, respectively.
In fact, here is the report's abstract, in full:
Despite the expectations of many after the 2016 elections, the number of concealed handgun permits has increased for the second year in a row. In 2018, the number of concealed handgun permits soared to now over 17.25 million – a 273% increase since 2007. 7.14% of American adults have permits. Unlike surveys that may be affected by people’s unwillingness to answer some personal questions, concealed handgun permit data is the only really “hard data” that we have on gun ownership across the United States. Still, an even larger number of people carry because in 14 states people don’t need a permit to carry in all or virtually all those states. Permits for women and blacks are increasing much faster than they are for men and whites. There are also significant differences in not only the number of permits issued but also who gets them when politicians have discretion in granting them. We also provide evidence on how incredibly law-abiding permit holders are.
Lott has crammed his report (.pdf) chock full of great information for the good guys. On page 40, he writes about reasons why people obtain carry licenses. The biggest driver of license applications? Mass killings. How does he know? He examined Google traffic and noticed huge spikes in searches for "concealed carry" immediately after mass shootings and even Islamic terror attacks.
From his report:
These attacks have also been followed by sharp increases in the number of permits being issued. With about 890,000 new concealed handgun permits issued in just the last year — bringing the total to 17.25 million — Americans have clearly done more than simply look up information on the Internet.
The surge in concealed handgun permits corresponds closely with opinion polls on guns. Take a series of polls by the Pew Research Center. In December 2012, 48% of respondents said that owning a gun “protected them from being crime victims” as opposed to 37% who answered that it would be “putting people’s safety at risk.”25 By December 2014, people’s positive impressions of gun ownership had grown to a margin of 57-to-38.
Similar changes can be seen in polls by Gallup and ABC News-Washington Post.26 They asked a more narrow question: whether having a gun in the home makes the home safer or more dangerous. The change has been dramatic. In 2000, Gallup found that only 35 percent of Americans thought that owning a gun made their home safer. By 2014, that number had soared to 63 percent.
It's not just that Americans think that having a gun makes them safer as individuals. They also feel better knowing that their neighbors are armed. A Rasmussen poll from this past June found that a 68-to-22 percent margin of Americans “feel safer in a neighborhood where guns are allowed.”27
A poll by PEW helps to explain why there has been such a large increase in concealed handgun permits among blacks and women. The poll shows a 25 percentage point increase in the proportion of blacks with a favorable view of gun ownership. This is the largest increase of any group. The increase among all women was 11 percentage points, and the increase among men was 8 percentage points.
Lott's report serves as nothing but bad news for Democrats who have fully embraced gun control as a campaign plank going into the midterms this fall.
From Fox News:
As the Democrats shift to the left on a number of issues from health care to immigration, they’ve already gone all in on one of the most contentious issues around — gun control.
A study by The Wall Street Journal found that of the 63 candidates on the House Democrats’ campaign arm’s list of seats to flip in November, 62 support expanded background checks for gun purchases.
It also serves to debunk the mainstream media narrative. Is it any wonder you haven't heard anything about this report on NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, or the New York Times?
In fact, when I Googled this morning, "John Lott report demand for concealed carry permits 7.14%", Google gave me two hits. I didn't even get back the Daily Caller story. Are the tech giants suppressing bad news in search results now as well as in their social media sites?