Concealed carry reciprocity at the federal level is more likely to happen now, before the midterms, than at any other point in history. It’s still an uphill fight, but President Trump has promised his support, and others are rallying to the cause. That’s the good news.
Unfortunately, there are still enough senators who can filibuster the bill that it makes it a challenge to get it to the president’s desk.
Still, gun control groups are digging in for a fight. They’re trying to lay the groundwork for their attacks on the bill, but if they look like this, they should just give up now.
Let’s start with the headline, because it matters. It reads, “More Than 2,800 Non-Self Defense Deaths Involving Concealed Carry Killers Since 2007, Latest Violence Policy Center Research Shows.”
Note the language here: “concealed carry killers” versus “non-self defense[sic] deaths.”
That’s an important point that will come up here in a bit.
Now, for the “argument”:
Concealed handgun permit holders are responsible for at least 2,817 deaths not involving self-defense since 2007, according to the Violence Policy Center’s (VPC) ongoing Concealed Carry Killers (concealedcarrykillers.org) project, an online resource that provides examples of non-self defense killings involving private citizens with permits to carry concealed handguns in public.
This latest update comes as legislation endorsed by the gun lobby and firearms industry has been introduced in the U.S. House (H.R. 38) and Senate (S. 65) to allow individuals with state-issued concealed firearm permits to carry their weapons in any state that issues carry permits or does not prohibit the carrying of concealed firearms. The bills are currently moving through the committee process.
Overall, Concealed Carry Killers documents 2,552 fatal, non-self defense incidents since May 2007 in 40 states and the District of Columbia, resulting in the deaths of 2,817 people. Thirty-eight of the incidents were fatal mass shootings as defined by federal law (three or more victims killed), resulting in the deaths of 186 victims. At least 24 law enforcement officers have died at the hands of concealed carry killers since May 2007.
VPC Government Affairs Director Kristen Rand states, “While the firearms industry and gun lobby push for coast-to-coast concealed carry, real-world facts show that concealed handgun permit holders are far more likely to kill themselves or innocent victims than use their gun in a justifiable homicide.”
Of course, they note that there are no official records keeping track of this, so they have to base all of their so-called research on news reports and whatever limited data they can get from the states, but let’s start off by looking at the raw numbers presented here. They maintain that the actual numbers are probably higher, which might be true, but probably isn’t. Still, let’s look at what they’ve got because that’s what we have.
It’s been 17 full years since 2007, and I’m making an assumption they’re not including any information from this year–which isn’t a safe assumption, to be fair, but for the sake of argument, I think this will be fine–which means we’re looking at 165.7 “deaths” by concealed carriers per year.
Sure, those are all tragic, to be certain, but when you look at nearly 46,000 “gun deaths” each year, it’s not even a drop in the bucket.
“But Tom, those ‘gun deaths’ include suicides. Isn’t that apples and oranges?”
A fair question, good reader, but it’s not. Why? Because the VPC does the exact same thing.
In the vast majority of the 2,552 incidents documented in Concealed Carry Killers (2,435, or 95 percent), the concealed carry permit holder either died by suicide (1,732), has already been convicted (614), perpetrated a murder-suicide (65), or was killed in the incident (24). Of the 77 cases still pending, the vast majority (61) of concealed carry killers have been charged with criminal homicide, five were deemed incompetent to stand trial, and 11 incidents are still under investigation. An additional 40 incidents were fatal unintentional shootings involving the gun of the concealed handgun permit holder.
The fact that someone has a concealed carry permit has nothing at all to do with their suicide. Plenty of people take their own lives with guns while lacking carry permits. Others use different means of doing the same thing. Suicide numbers really shouldn’t be included in a look at “concealed carry killers,” now, should it? Not if you really want to make the case that national reciprocity will make people less safe.
Interestingly, the chart they include has a section for “self-defense/no verdict,” which makes no sense at all if you’re trying to claim these aren’t self-defense shootings.
Still, if we decide to accept the remaining numbers at face value–mostly because they don’t include any total on those “self-defense/no verdict” numbers–we end up with 1,085 deaths attributed to concealed carry permit holders. That’s an average of just under 64 killings per year. That’s versus an average of just under 18,000 murders with firearms.
That’s not a problem. That’s statistical noise.
Then we have their interpretation of these claims.
VPC Government Affairs director Kristen Rand is quoted as saying, “While the firearms industry and gun lobby push for coast-to-coast concealed carry, real-world facts show that concealed handgun permit holders are far more likely to kill themselves or innocent victims than use their gun in a justifiable homicide.”
Except that’s not the case at all, and even the anti-gun The Trace knows that’s not true.
How do I know that? Because look at their report on defensive gun uses, which looked at both Gun Violence Archive numbers and numbers from The Heritage Foundation.
Gun Violence Archive, the Kentucky-based nonprofit that tallies gun-related incidents in near-real time, also counts DGUs. But it only captures incidents that make the news or are reported to police. And GVA includes incidents involving illegal gun possessors as well as legal owners, including shootouts as well as stand-your-ground shootings. GVA recorded 8,394 DGUs from 2017 to 2021, which works out to an average of 1,678 a year. But that’s likely a massive undercount.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, launched a DGU tracker in 2019 that relies on media reports, but counts only defensive gun use by lawful owners. Heritage tallied 2,106 shootings from 2019 to 2021, for an average of 702 per year. The group cautions that it’s “not intended to be comprehensive” because “most defensive gun uses are never reported to law enforcement, much less picked up by local or national media outlets.” That’s a common belief among pro-gun advocates, some of whom believe the 2.5 million figure is, in fact, too low.
Both of these totals are much lower than the 165.7 per year average noted above. It’s worth noting, though, that these are compiled through media reports, just as VPC’s numbers are. If their estimates are low, then it stands to reason that we’re right about the defensive gun use totals also being low, especially since a lot of them never make the news.
And if you remove suicides from the equation, as you should, the difference is even more stark.
However, then we need to consider concealed carry holders versus society as a whole, since this whole report was intended to imply that they’re a danger to society.
Joe LoPorto, the Director of Legal Operations for the New Jersey Firearms Owners Syndicate, did a little math, passed along to me, comparing per capita rates overall. Here’s what he told me:
The VPC, financially backed by the Joyce Foundation, itself a President Obama pet project with over $1 billion in assets has been running its Concealed Carry Killers database for years. We all know the numbers they are producing are massively inflated. However, even when taken at face value and considering the most conservative estimate of the number of Americans with a concealed carry permit (rounded down to just 20 million), their own data support our point.
Based on their own data, presented by VPC in a way to look as inflammatory as possible, the murder rate amongst the population of concealed carry permit holders in the U.S. would be 2.7 per 100,000 people, or less than half the murder rate of the overall U.S. population at 5.9 per 100,000. Again, based on their inflated numbers, the suicide rate of concealed carry permit holders would be 5.0 per 100,000 or about 1/3rd that of the overall U.S. population at 14.2 per 100,000.
Even accepting their inflated statistics, their own data show that concealed carry permit holders in the U.S. are substantially safer than the overall U.S. population.
New Jersey is the perfect example. Before Bruen, virtually no one was able to obtain a concealed carry permit. In the years since Bruen, nearly 100,000 New Jerseyans obtained concealed carry permits… and the violent crime and gun crime rates in the state declined.
Peaceable people exercising their core constitutional rights in the U.S. are not the problem.
That last bit, especially, is absolutely correct.
On every level, their entire premise falls apart. The attempt to demonize concealed carry permit holders fails in the face of literally any other evidence. It only works in a vacuum, and there’s no such thing in the world of media today.
Seriously, this is so absolutely pathetic that they should hide in shame for the next thousand years or so.
Editor’s Note: Anti-gun groups like the Violence Policy Coalition will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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