Since 2007, the amount of concealed carry permit holders has increased by 273%.
2016 marked the highest number of background checks performed for gun purchases in recorded history. Recent studies have shown that despite what the mainstream and other anti-gun organizations would like us to believe, people are still purchasing guns in record numbers.
Less than a year into Trump’s Presidency, news outlets were reporting the “massive gun sales decline” (fortune.com) of 2017. Yes, the number of firearm sales and background check requests did dip under the numbers leading up to the 2016 presidential election; however, by July 2018, 12,601,102 National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) were performed. The second highest for any July.
Every time we look at the number of NICS recorded in a month, we must remember the number does not necessarily correlate with the exact number of gun sales. People requesting background checks could be purchasing more than one gun at a time or be denied the purchase. This means that the number of background checks the FBI performs could be lower or higher than the actual number of guns sold. It is still a very good indication of how healthy the firearms industry is and how many Americans are interested in gun ownership.
In a recent study conducted by the Crime Prevention Research Center, there are 17.25 million concealed carry permit holders in the United States. This is a 273% increase from 2007. Even this is not an exact number of gun owners or guns owned in the U.S. due to many factors, including some people’s hesitation to report gun ownership and the 14 states that have Constitutional Carry. There is no solid number of how people own and carry a firearm.
This study headed up by the Crime Prevention Research Center’s founder and a world-leading expert on firearms and crime, Dr. John Lott, Jr. found that the number of Asian, African-American, American Native and white women receiving their license to carry outgrew white men pursuing theirs. During the time of the study, there has been an overall decline in murder and violent crime rates. Further, Americans are also increasingly feeling safer with gun ownership.