Report: 20% of Likely Voters Licensed to Carry

Twenty percent of likely voters hold a permit/license to carry a concealed sidearm, more than double the rate of adults overall (8%), according to a report from the Crime Prevention Research Center.

Another revelation in the CPRC report is that "people in the 29 constitutional-carry states carry concealed handguns more frequently (34.2%) than people in 21 right-to-carry states (25.98%)."

The CPRC, founded by Dr. John Lott, monitors a wide range of firearms data. Late last year, the CPRC reported the number of licensed concealed carriers had declined for the third consecutive year, to an estimated 20.88 million. However, the CPRC explained, "A major factor behind this ongoing decrease is the widespread adoption of Constitutional Carry laws."

"Interestingly," the CPRC observed, "people in Constitutional Carry states carry handguns at much higher rates than those in pure Right-to-Carry states (34.19% versus 25.98%). In Constitutional Carry states, the share of likely voters who carry exceeds the share with permits by about 13 percentage points. In the other pure Right-to-Carry states, the share who carry exceeds the share with permits by about six percentage points. So Constitutional Carry laws result in about seven percentage points more people carrying than have a permit." …