Reducing Crime with Right to Carry Concealed Carry Laws

The facts are starting to come in showing that states that have adopted right to carry policy when issuing concealed carry permits are seeing a reduction in crime.  As states adjust to this policy and the populations of concealed carry permit holders increases the result is crime rates are going down, in particular the murder rate in each of these states.  There are still nay-sayers who disagree with these results arguing that a true cause and effect relationship cannot be established but by looking at the statistics we can see if there is a trend.

There has been a growing trend within a majority of the states in the United States of changing their concealed carry laws.  Previously, many of these states were ‘may issue’ states for concealed carry permits.  This meant that in addition to meeting all the training requirements and completing the concealed carry application process that you had to also give reason or justification as to why you needed a permit.  This was most often interpreted as fear of imminent harm to your person or family.  Even with this proof it was up to the sheriff or police to make the decision to grant the permit and they could decide to not grant the permit.  A majority of states now fall in the ‘shall issue’ category which means when you complete the application and meet all the requirements for the permit that you will be issued the permit without being required to show particular need.  Many responsible gun owners who were previously denied a CCW have reapplied under the new laws increasing the number of CCWs in each state.

What is the result of the increasing CCW population?

When you look at the states who have modified their laws to shall issue you consistently see a reduction in the occurrence of murders and aggravated assaults.  Each state shows a similar decline of up to 8.5% in these areas.   (ref. FBI crime statistics) There are those that argue that you cannot directly correlate the reduction in murder rate as there are too many other contributing factors in the data such as the increase in the number of police or a decrease in the population in certain areas.  This is a valid argument but what cannot be denied is that the trend occurred in every state.

This is just additional reason that CCWs save lives and when you’re ready to get your CCW permit got to Online Carry Training and register.