STUDY: More Concealed & Constitutional Carry, Less Crime

By Bob Owens

The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) has released a new report showing that as concealed carry has grown a tremendous degree in recent years, crime is dropping. The study wisely does not try to stretch and claim that correlation equals causation, as there are too many variables involved to make such a definitive statement.

That allowed, the Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership (DRGO) review of the study was quick to note that the murder and violent crime rates in constitutional carry states is lower than that of the states who greatly restrict concealed carry.

In the typically meticulous and granular detail criminologist John Lott is famous for, Lott and his CPRC researchers gathered from each individual state their records of the number of concealed carry permit holders. They compared that updated total to another report completed by the federal Government Accountability Office three years ago, which had found there were at least 8 million license holders as of December 31, 2011.

Lott’s group, using the state-by-state analysis (sometimes even drilling down to the county level to verify numbers of licenses), found the number had by June 2014 increased to well over 11.1 million. Further, they noted that for …read more

Source:: Bearing Arms