The Oklahoman Editorial Board, Sunday, August 14, 2016
DUE in part to recent mass shootings, Democrats have begun to embrace gun control again. The Hill, a newspaper covering Congress, noted that this amounts to Democrats “betting that a shift in voter sentiment has turned a once-toxic issue into a political winner.”
There’s good reason to think Democrats are wrong, particularly if their calculations are driven by the stereotype that guns-rights supporters are mostly rural, working-class whites who seldom vote Democrat anyway.
A recent paper by John R. Lott, Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, shows that those obtaining concealed carry permits extend far beyond rural white males.
For one thing, in the eight states that identify the gender of permit holders, Lott found the number of permits has increased by 161 percent for women since 2012, nearly double the 85 percent increase for men.
In Arizona, women now account for 21.2 percent of concealed carry permit holders. The numbers are similar elsewhere: Florida (24.1 percent), Indiana (22.7 percent), Louisiana (24.8 percent), North Carolina (27.5 percent) and Texas (25.8 percent). . .
.In short, if gun control is a “wedge issue” this year, it may be one that drives a wedge between Democrats and (demographically speaking) their own base voters.
The rest of their long Sunday editorial on our report is available here. See also this:
The National Interest, Monday, August 15, 2016
“Indeed, it is impossible to think of any other group in the U.S. that is anywhere near as law-abiding,” says the report, titled “Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States 2016.”
From 2007 through 2015, permits issued by state and local governments increased by 215 percent, to more than 14 million Americans, according to the data.
The study compared permit holders to police, who committed 703 crimes from 2005 to 2007, and 113 of those were firearm violations.
“With about 685,464 full-time police officers in the U.S. from 2005 to 2007, we find that there were about 103 crimes per hundred thousand officers,” the report reads. “For the U.S. population as a whole, the crime rate was 37 times higher—3,813 per hundred thousand people.” . . .
See here for the rest of their long discussion of our research.
Breitbart, Monday, August 15, 2016
The number of permits held nationwide surpasses 14.5 million, which means “6.06% of the total adult population has a permit.”
According to CPRC, there was an increase of 1.73 million concealed permits in 2015 alone. This was 100,000 greater than the previous record of 163,000, set in 2014.
It is interesting to note that “in ten states, more than 10% of adults have concealed handgun permits.” The highest rate of carry is in Indiana, where 15% of adults have a permit. “South Dakota is close behind with 14.7%” and Florida, Texas, and Philadelphia “each have over a million residents who are active permit holders.”
But even with staggering figures, CPRC indicates there could be many more than 14.5 million citizens carrying guns for self-defense because 11 states do not require a permit “to carry in all or virtually all of the state.” . . .
0 Comments