Report: As Conceal Carry Permits Climb, Murder Rates Drop

Townhall .com  Leah Barkoukis  July 19, 2015

Gun control advocates insist that tougher gun laws will reduce murder rates, but according to a new report by the Crime Prevention Research Center, just the opposite has been true under President Obama.

Since President Obama’s election the number of concealed handgun permits has soared, growing from 4.6 million in 2007 to over 12.8 million this year. Among the findings in our report:

-- The number of concealed handgun permits is increasing at an ever- increasing rate. Over the past year, 1.7 million additional new permits have been issued – a 15.4% increase in just one single year. This is the largest ever single-year increase in the number of concealed handgun permits. [...]

-- Between 2007 and 2014, murder rates have fallen from 5.6 to 4.2 (preliminary estimates) per 100,000. This represents a 25% drop in the murder rate at the same time that the percentage of the adult population with permits soared by 156%. Overall violent crime also fell by 25 percent over that period of time.

-- States with the largest increase in permits have seen the largest relative drops in murder rates.

“It puts the lie to the myth promulgated by anti-gun individuals that somehow more law-abiding citizens carrying guns will lead to more crime. In fact, quite the opposite is the case,” said Larry Keene, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, reports The Washington Times. “More law-abiding citizens own firearms for self-protection, and crime continues to decline.”

Increasingly, too, polling shows support for gun ownership growing and support for gun control falling. The former eclipsed the latter in December of 2014, when for the first time the American public found it more important to protect Second Amendment rights than control gun ownership.

“The public increasingly understands that gun control is a failed social experiment, and it doesn’t work,” Keene said, reports the Times. “All gun control ever does is infringe upon the rights of the law-abiding citizens and does nothing to stop criminals from illegally acquiring firearms, and it doesn’t stop them from misusing them in crime.”

The researchers found that the change in trends with regard to permits and gun sales is directly related to Barack Obama’s presidency. Simply put, the greater the push for gun control in the wake of several mass shootings, the more Americans head to the gun shop.

“Whenever we see calls by politicians to take away the ability to exercise a fundamental civil liberty protected by the Second Amendment, people react,” Keene said, reports the Times.

And interestingly, the research shows that the stereotype of the gun-owning American “being a middle-aged white male from the South” is definitely not true anymore.

Women and minorities are getting more permits than Caucasian males, the research found. In fact, black females made up the fastest growing concealed handgun permit group. 

Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, told the Times that the data on black permit holders is good news for conservatives.

“That is probably one of the most encouraging findings in that whole survey,” he said. “That ought to give liberals and anti-Second Amendment folks a lot of reason to cry."