John Lott - Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States: 2022

L84Cabo · Nov 20, 2022

Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States: 2022

As the United States is moving into a post-pandemic era, the number of concealed handgun permits has continued increasing. The figure now stands at 22.01 millio

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Among the findings of our report:

■ Last year, the number of permit holders continued to grow by about 488,000. At 2.3% growth over 2021, that is the slowest percent and absolute increase that we have seen since we started collecting this data in 2011. Part of that is due to the number of permits declining in the Constitutional Carry states even though it is clear that more people are legally carrying.

■ 8.5% of American adults have permits. Outside of the restrictive states of California and New York, about 10.2% of adults have a permit.

■ In seventeen states, more than 10% of adults have permits. Since 2019, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and South Dakota have fallen below 10%, but they are now all Constitutional Carry states, meaning that people no longer need a permit to carry. The concealed carry rates for Connecticut, North Carolina, and Wisconsin have risen to above 10% this year.

■ Alabama has the highest concealed carry rate — 32.5%. Indiana is second with 23.4%, and Georgia is third with 15.5%.

■ Six states now have over 1 million permit holders: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Florida is the top states with 2.57 million permits.

■ Twenty-five states have adopted Constitutional Carry for their entire state, meaning that a permit is no longer required. Because of these Constitutional Carry states, the nationwide growth in permits does not paint a full picture of the overall increase in concealed carry. Many residents still choose to obtain permits so that they can carry in other states that have reciprocity agreements, but while permits are increasing in the non-Constitutional Carry states, they fell in the Constitutional Carry ones even though more people are clearly carrying in those states.

■ In 2022, women made up 29.2% of permit holders in the 15 states that provide data by gender, an increase from the 28.3% last year. Seven states had data from 2012 to 2021/2022, and permit numbers grew 115.4% faster for women than for men.