Kansas Issues 10,000 Concealed Carry Permits

Here is an article from the LJWorld (Lawrence and Douglas County, Kansas), January 14, 2008:

State issues 10,000 permits
Chad Lawhorn

Legislators allowed the Kansas Attorney General’s Office to begin accepting permit applications in July 2006, but licenses weren’t issued until January 2007. A total of 10,567 have been issued through the first week of this month.

Chuck Sexson, director of the concealed carry program for the Attorney General’s Office, said the office was busiest with applications in December 2006 and January 2007, when more than 1,000 were received in both months. But since September, the numbers have leveled off at about 350 or fewer per month. . . .

Here is the county by county data:

Evaluating Michigan's Right-to-carry Law After 6 years

Dawson Bell, a reporter at the Detroit Free Press, has a very interesting news article evaluating Michigan's experience after 6 years with the law. While these articles are frequently seen six months or a year after a right-to-carry law has gone into effect, it is really extremely rare to see this type of analysis piece done after that point in time. Here is about half the article, but the entire piece is definitely worth reading:

Michigan sees fewer gun deaths — with more permits
January 6, 2008
By DAWSON BELL
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Six years after new rules made it much easier to get a license to carry concealed weapons, the number of Michiganders legally packing heat has increased more than six-fold.
But dire predictions about increased violence and bloodshed have largely gone unfulfilled, according to law enforcement officials and, to the extent they can be measured, crime statistics.
The incidence of violent crime in Michigan in the six years since the law went into effect has been, on average, below the rate of the previous six years. The overall incidence of death from firearms, including suicide and accidents, also has declined.
More than 155,000 Michiganders -- about one in every 65 -- are now authorized to carry loaded guns as they go about their everyday affairs, according to Michigan State Police records.
About 25,000 people had CCW permits in Michigan before the law changed in 2001.
"I think the general consensus out there from law enforcement is that things were not as bad as we expected," said Woodhaven Police Chief Michael Martin, cochair of the legislative committee for the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police. "There are problems with gun violence. But ... I think we can breathe a sigh of relief that what we anticipated didn't happen."
John Lott, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland who has done extensive research on the role of firearms in American society, said the results in Michigan since the law changed don't surprise him.
Academic studies of concealed weapons laws that generally allow citizens to obtain permits have shown different results, Lott said. About two-thirds of the studies suggest the laws reduce crime; the rest show no net effect, he said.
But no peer-reviewed study has ever shown that crime increases when jurisdictions enact changes like those put in place by the Legislature and then-Gov. John Engler in 2000, Lott said.
In Michigan and elsewhere (liberal permitting is the rule in about 40 states), those who seek CCW permits, get training and pay licensing fees tend to be "the kind of people who don't break laws," Lott said.
Nationally, the rate of CCW permits being revoked is very low, he said. State Police reports in Michigan indicate that 2,178 permits have been revoked or suspended since 2001, slightly more than 1% of those issued.
Another State Police report found that 175 Michigan permit holders were convicted of a crime, most of them nonviolent, requiring revocation or suspension of their permits between July 1, 2005, and June 30, 2006.
But even if more armed citizens have not wreaked havoc, some critics of Michigan's law chafe at how it was passed: against stiff opposition in a lame duck legislative session and attached to an appropriation that nullified efforts at repeal by referendum. . . .

I liked the title of the piece.

Permits in Utah

This is kind of interesting that "1,000 non-resident citizens of foreign countries, from the Congo to Switzerland" have concealed handgun permits.

Nearly half of the 28,000 permits issued this year will go to out-of-state residents. Utah has issued more than 100,000 concealed gun permits since the program began in the early 1990s.

Ed McConkie, chief of the Bureau of Criminal Identification told the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee Wednesday some rule changes, including one that allows the BCI to keep the fees it collects for concealed weapon permits, has allowed the agency to catch up on its backlog of background checks.

Under law, the agency must issue the permit within 60 days. Before the new rule took effect, the waiting period had reached 120 days, violating the statute. Now it's 49 days for Utah applicants and 53 days for out-of-state residents. . . . .

Through reciprocity agreements, Utah's permit allows holders to carry a concealed gun in 34 states. More than 1,000 non-resident citizens of foreign countries, from the Congo to Switzerland, have been issued Utah permits.

An Analysis of Concealed Permit Holders in Tennessee

WBIR TV in Knoxville, Tennessee has a detailed discussion of permit holders' characteristics. It shows a county by county breakdown of the 177,881 permit holders in the state. They find that while permit holders tend to be white males living in the suburbs, "there was no clear pattern" with income.

The actual TV report can be seen here. One county apparently had 11 percent of people with permits. The survey that they are referring to about the US having the highest gun ownership rate in the world is wrong. The study paid for by George Soros confused total guns with gun ownership rate.


Thanks to SayUncle and Clint Kritzer.

Concealed Handgun Permit holders Extremely Law-abiding in Florida

1.28 million people permitted between 10/1/87 - 9/30/07
revoked for firearms related violation: 162

Utah slightly tightens permitting rules

I don't think that this will make any real difference in the number of permits, though I know of no information that there were any problems with these permit holders.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah has stopped issuing concealed-gun permits to foreigners because of the rising number of applicants and the difficulty of conducting background checks. . . . .

Since 1995, Utah has issued 92,000 permits, 30 percent to non-Utah residents. Applicants typically must show they attended a safety class. Even a blind North Dakota man has one. . . . .

Concealed Handgun Permits in Michigan

Earlier today I talked to a reporter from the Detroit Free Press, Dawson Bell, and he indicated that there are 140,000 permit holders in the state as of a month ago.

West Virginia has 82,000 Permits

Eight other states [besides Pennsylvania] formally recognize West Virginia's estimated 82,000 concealed weapons permits, but West Virginia has yet to enter into an agreement with them to recognize their permits. The states are: Alaska, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Vermont.

This is about 5.72 percent of the state's adult population.

Concealed Handgun Permits Fall Dramatically in New York City

Well, the politically connected people who used to get approved for permits were normally not the ones who need them the most. At least this means that it won't have a big impact on crime.

The number of New Yorkers who may carry pistols legally dropped this year, while permits issued to allow people to keep pistols in their home increased, according to police statistics.

Mayor Bloomberg has sought to cut the number ofconcealed weapons on city streets, and since he has been in office it has dropped dramatically. This year, 2,516 New Yorkers received a permit to carry a concealed pistol. The city issued 2,555 such permits in 2006, almost 50% fewer than the 4,789 that were given out in 2004. . . . .

Michigan: Permit holders extremely law abiding

Concealed weapon license holders are some of the most law abiding citizens in our state [Michigan]. Over the past five years 203,051 concealed weapon permits have been issued in Michigan and only 671 licenses have been revoked. That equals less than one percent (actually .34%) of all issued licenses that have been revoked.

As a State Representative I was elected to pass laws which protect the citizens of Michigan. That is why I introduced House Bill 4759 into the Michigan House of Representatives on May 15, 2007. This legislation would eliminate the above nine safe zones for all concealed weapon license holders. . . .

Note that this seems to include revocations for all reasons. My guess is that revocation for gun related violations is less than even one percent of this rate.

Concealed Handgun Permit Rate in Minnesota

More than 42,000 people are licensed to carry handguns in public in Minnesota, 19,147 of them in the seven-county Twin Cities area, the state Department of Public Safety reported Thursday. . . . .

The article makes a big deal of the fact that fewer people got a permit than was originally perdicted. If they had listened to my predictions, they wouldn't be making this claim. Second, the quote below is exactly what David Mustard and I argued in our 1997 JLS paper.

Since passage of the law, which overturned a system that gave police chiefs and sheriffs wide discretion to deny permits, the number of permits has more than tripled. The increase has been even more marked in the Twin Cities area, where law enforcement officials previously kept a tight rein on permits. . . . .

Concealed Handgun Permit Rate in Alabama

I am a little baffled by the claim that is supposedly attributed to Gary Kleck that "found that 2.9 percent of adults in states with the most gun-friendly laws had permits." My numbers show a number of states with much highe rates than 2.9 percent. Possibly he means an average rate, but the context of the discussion is in terms of the highest rates. As to my quotes, I did mention that there were some counties in Pennsylvania that actually had permit rates above 20 percent, so Alabama's rate is no where near the top of the range, though they are rural counties.

Some of the details about who had permits were interesting. I particularly like the fact that in Jefferson County 284 were housewives.

Birmingham News (Alabama)

February 18, 2007 Sunday

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A Vol. 119 No. 342

LENGTH: 1808 words

HEADLINE: Metro area loaded with concealed guns Records show more than 1 in 10
adults may have carry permits; for many, 'it's an insurance policy'

BYLINE: STAN DIEL News staff writer

BODY:

. . . Still, some of the leading academics who study the issue said Birmingham stands out.

John Lott, a former scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of several books on handguns and crime, said his research has never identified a city with a higher percentage of adults with permits.

''Those are pretty remarkable numbers,'' he said.

Among states for which Lott said he'd collected data, South Dakota has the highest percentage of adults with permits, 7.5 percent. Lott said he'd run across a handful of very rural counties with higher percentages than greater Birmingham, but not a city of any size.

Gary Kleck, a professor in the criminology department at Florida State University, said the most recent significant research he has seen - done for a book published in 2000 - found that 2.9 percent of adults in states with the most gun-friendly laws had permits. That's less than a third of the rate in Birmingham. . . .

SHELBY COUNTY

9,620 total permits
8% adults with permits
73% male
27% female
49 average age
90 oldest permit holder
305 nurses
222 salespeople
156 business owners
140 managers
$20 cost per year

JEFFERSON COUNTY

53,545 total permits
11% adults with permit
70% male
30% female
2,091 retired
1,897 self-employed
284 housewives
$7.50 cost per year

Massachusetts: 203,302 Concealed Handgun Permits

All this assumes that the Boston Globe got these numbers correct.

Speak of people carrying concealed handguns rates in Texas or Florida to someone in Massachusetts and I am sure that they would be viewed as examples of the dangerous wild west. So who has more concealed handgun permits per capita? Texas or Massachusetts? Texas has 22.9 million people and 247,345 permits. For Massachusetts, which has 6.4 million people, the numbers are quite high: “In Massachusetts, 203,302 residents were licensed to carry concealed weapons as of August, according to the state Criminal History Systems Board.” Texas would have to have over 726,000 permits to have the same rate of issuance. (Obviously it would be nice to compare only the adult populations, but this fast comparison using total populations will give a useful rough measure.)

How about Florida or Massachusetts? Florida is way up there also with 549,000 permits, but on a per capita rate it would have over 565,000 if it issued permits at the same rate as Massachusetts.

While I am putting this up, for Utah it is 79,353 permits. Utah and Massachusetts have virtually the same rate of issuing permits per capita, but my guess is that Massachusetts' rate is higher among adults.

By the way, the Brady Campaign gives Massachusetts a "B+" for its concealed carry system because police have discretion to grant permits, but it gives Texas a "D" and Florida and Utah an "F"s.

Pennsylvania, Indiana, and South Dakota have the highest rates of issuing permits 6.4, 6.4 and 7.5 percent of adults respectively. There are over 1.1 million permits issued just from Pennsylvania and Florida alone.

Thanks to Maxim Lott for discovering this fact about Massachusetts.

Argus Leader (S.D.) puts permit holders names on line

More than 41,000 South Dakotans have permits to carry handguns or conceal them in their cars - the highest rate per capita in the nation, an Argus Leader analysis shows.

Records compiled from the state - and now barred from public view, under a law passed this year by the Legislature - show that 7.4 percent of South Dakota adults had such a permit as of June 30. Next closest are Indiana and Pennsylvania, with 6.4 percent of adults licensed to carry a handgun. . . .

The newspaper's analysis of state permits shows that, overall, the handgun culture is more firmly entrenched in western South Dakota, although McCook County, just west of Sioux Falls, had the highest rate of permits - nearly 12 percent - of any county.
. . .

Unfortunately, the Argus Leader has set up a database so that you can check who has a concealed handgun permit in the state. You would think that the newspaper would point to at least one problem with the permitting system in South Dakota before writing articles such as these.

There is an online poll on concealed handgun laws here, though i don't know how long it will be up.

The articles discuss suicides by firearms, but they fail to note that these suicides would likely have been committed anyway.

Thanks to Rick Statler for alerting me to this.

Latest Estimated Percent of Adults with Concealed Handgun Permits for Some States

7.45% South Dakota
6.79% Indiana
6.76% Pennsylvania
5.23% Connecticut
5.12% Washington
4.34% Idaho
4.10% Utah
3.86% Oregon
3.45% Tennessee
3.15% Alabama
2.71% Kentucky
2.67% Wyoming
2.41% Maine
2.18% Arkansas
2.11% Virginia

I would like to thank Ken Grubb for sending me these numbers, though many of these numbers are lower than what I have seen cited in newspaper articles from these states. One obvious factor for the statest with the highest permit rates is the low prices for permits and low training requirements (South Dakota, Indiana, and Pennsylvania).