An analysis of 11 states that have removed concealed carry permits that imposed firearms training or proficiency requirements suggests that violent gun assault rates increase 32 percentaccording to a new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The study examined 11 states which moved from requiring buyers to demonstrate the need for a permit for a concealed weapon – known as issued laws – to concealed without a permit laws. In some states, laws will require licensees to complete live firearms training, a minimum number of hours at a shooting range, or proficiency (e.g., hitting a designated target with 70% of their shots ). Some states will also issue bans on people convicted of violent crimes from obtaining licenses.
When 11 states must issue licensing laws that require safety training to obtain a concealed carry permit moved to concealed carry without a permit, the annual rate of gun assaults increased increases by 21 per 100,000. Some statistical models also found a significant increase in gun assaults when states dropped provisions barring people convicted of violent crimes from obtaining a concealed carry permit.
THE results were published on September 19, 2023 in Criminology and public policy.
“When states made it easier for potentially untrained gun owners to carry their guns in public, gun assaults increased,” said Cassandra Crifasi, PhD, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Solutions. gun violence at Bloomberg School. “While the Supreme Court Bruen While the ruling requires some states to weaken their concealed carry permitting systems, this study shows that states can reduce the expected increase in gun assault rates by including training requirements.
For their analysis, the researchers used data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s web-based injury statistics query and reporting systems, as well as the National Center health statistics from the CDC. Researchers identified state laws using databases and reviewing state legislative history.
The 11 states analyzed are: Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming.
The researchers used advanced statistical modeling to compare states that changed their laws allowing concealed carry with states that had not changed them. In the analysis, violent crime rates for each of the eleven states that removed the requirement to obtain a permit to carry concealed weapons in public were compared to the best “synthetic controls” – predicted crime rates derived from data from other states that had restrictive permit requirements in the analysis. place throughout the study period.
Twenty-seven states currently permit unlicensed carry of a concealed weapon, and 17 states issue permits on a must-issue basis. State laws have relaxed over the past 40 years; as recently as 1981, 21 states banned all forms of concealed carry.
The study takes place in the context of Bruen July 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that found New York State’s law requiring permit holders to have a valid reason or special need to obtain a carry permit to be unconstitutional. concealed weapons (commonly referred to as “can deliver” permit). Laws requiring good cause in other states, including California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, have been revised or are being revised. The decision requires states that can issue permits to move to systems that will issue or not issue permits.
“This study shows that making the concealed carry permitting process more rigorous can have a major impact on public safety,” said Daniel Webster, ScD, MPH, Bloomberg Professor of American Health and Distinguished Scholar at the Center for Gun Violence Solutions from Bloomberg University. School. “This study is unique in that it analyzes specific provisions of concealed carry laws to identify those that are most effective in avoiding the harmful consequences of concealed carry licensing expansion.”
The study was supported by the New Venture Fund and the Joyce Foundation.
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