It may not be the Wild West, but Americans are ever more increasingly armed.
A new study by the Crime Prevention Research Center looked at violent crime rates in conjunction with the recent explosion in concealed carry permits. In 2007, 4.6 million Americans carried concealed weapons. Data for 2013 shows that, in just six years, that number has more than doubled to 11.1 million concealed carry permit holders.
Analyzing data for violent crime in the US, the Crime Prevention Research Center found that murder rates in the US have dropped by 22 percent in the same period and violent crime fell by a similar percentage. While this drop is the result of a number of different factors, the prevalence of concealed weapons did play an important role. The study “suggests that each 1 percentage point increase in the percent of the adult population holding permits is roughly associated with a 1.4 percent drop in the murder rate.”
The study also examined if concealed carry permit holders used their weapons to commit crimes, performing detailed data analysis on permit holders in Florida and Texas.
Writing about Florida, the report states that “Over the last 77 months from January 2008 through May 2014, just four permits have been revoked for firearms-related violations. With an average of about 875,000 active permit holders per year during those years, the annual revocation rate for firearms related violations is 0.00007 percent — 7 one hundred thousandths of 1 percentage point.”
The study’s findings were aptly summarized by John Lott, the Crime Prevention Research Center’s founder, on Fox News.
“When you allow people to carry concealed handguns, you see changes in the behavior of criminals,” Lott said. “Some criminals stop committing crimes, others move on to crimes in which they don’t come into contact with victims and others actually move to areas where they have less fear of being confronted by armed victims.”
