Concealed-carry permit holders are the most law-abiding demographic of U.S. citizens, according to a recent report by the Crime Prevention Research Center.
The report, titled, “Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across The United States 2016,” compared permit holders to the general population and then to police officers in Florida and Texas, two states which largely mirror the rest of the country.
The data revealed that from 2005 to 2007, “there were 103 crimes per 100,000 police officers,” while the U.S. population’s crime rate is 37 times that number.
Permit holders are convicted of felonies and misdemeanors at less than a sixth of the rate of police officers, according to the study. Officers also commit firearm violations, 16.5 per 100,000, seven times more frequently than permit holders, at only 2.4 per 100,000 in Texas and Florida.
The report also shows that crime declined in states that do not require permits to carry. It reads, “Indeed, the murder rate was 31 percent lower in the states not requiring permits. The violent crime rate was 28 percent lower.” Currently, several groups, such as Everytown for Gun Safety and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, are targeting concealed-carry laws as a part of broader gun control measures.
Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety recently boasted of its achievements in defeating proposals in 16 states that would allow citizens to carry without a permit. Similarly, the Brady Center argued that concealed-carry permit applicants should prove to state and local governments that they have a “good cause” to carry a handgun in public. President Dan Gross referred to arguments in favor of concealed-carry permits as “repugnant lies and wild west fantasies peddled by the corporate gun lobby.”
Gross made these comments in a speech after a D.C. circuit court ruled that permit applicants should prove “good cause” to carry.
Prominent economist and the researcher John Lott, the man behind the new study, said permit holders are “reluctant to use the the guns in a wrong way because they have a lot to lose if they do something wrong,” in an interview with The Daily Signal, elaborating that he was not surprised with the report’s results. Persons undergong the rigorous concealed-carry application process would likely be upstanding citizens, Lott conjectured.
Permits issued by state and local governments have gone up 215 percent during Obama’s tenure in office, according to the study. Over 14 million Americans applied for permits during this time.
“Indeed, it is impossible to think of any other group in the U.S. that is anywhere near as law-abiding,” Lott concluded.
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