Concealed Carry Is Way Up, Violent Crime Is Way Down

A study done by the Crime Prevention Research Center shows that concealed carry permits are up from 4.5 million in 2007 to 11.1 million today. That 146% increase has come as violent crimes dropped by 22%. So do more guns equal less crime?

Today’s episode of the Freedom Report takes a look at the fundamental right to bear arms and asks the question: Do our rights depend on the outcomes of those rights? Meaning, even if more gun ownership caused more crime, would that be an excuse to restrict those rights? Or, should our rights be fixed on principle rather than the consequences of those rights?

All that and more on the Freedom Report podcast.

Listen: 

From Fox News:

Increasing gun ownership, litigation and new state laws have all contributed to the rise in concealed carry permits. In March, Illinois became the 50^th state to begin issuing concealed weapons permits. But the cost and other requirements for obtaining the permits varies greatly, from South Dakota, where a permit requires $10, a background check and no training, to Illinois, where the cost of obtaining a permit comes to more than $600 when the fee and cost of training programs are taken into account.

Six states don’t require a permit for legal gun owners to conceal their weapons, and Lott notes those states have some of the lowest violent crime rates in the nation.

The real measure of the deterrent effect of concealed carry permits, according to Lott, is not laws on the books, but the percentage of a given state’s population that holds the permits. In 10 states, more than 8 percent of adults hold concealed carry permits, and all are among the states with the lowest crime rates. Lott claims his group’s analysis shows that each one percentage point increase in the adult population holding permits brings a 1.4 percent drop in the murder rate.

“We found that the size of the drop [in crime] is directly related to the percentage of the population with permits,” Lott said.

Between 2007 and the preliminary estimates for 2013, murder rates have fallen from 5.6 to 4.4 per 100,000.

Tod Burke, a former police officer and a professor of criminal justice at Radford University, in Radford, Va., said he doesn’t buy the idea that gun permits are driving the reduction in crime. Burke said several factors, including smarter, “data-driven” policing and increased incarceration of violent criminals likely play a bigger role.