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Monday, September 26, 2011

Needed: Reports By State Showing Number of Concealed Carry Permits Currently Active

Many states have reports online showing the number of active concealed carry permits that they have issued.  As an example, here is Texas' report for year end 2010: 461,724 active permits.  Please add in the comments section URLs for similar reports for other states, and I will move this information into the main body of this posting.  I need this information for an upcoming Cato Institute paper.

Arizona: effective 9/25/2011: 162,101

California 2007: 40,296

Colorado 12/31/2010: 114,049 (although not clear how many of these are currently active--at least some may not have renewed).  I received a response from the office that produces this report--those are concealed weapon license background checks run--not necessarily a count of permits actually issued.

Florida: 8/31/2011: 845,828 ordinary folks and 525 for judges

Georgia 2008 p. 43: The courts processed 101,684 firearms licenses in 2008, but nothing identifies how many were issued (although it is likely the vast majority of applications were approved); licenses are valid for five years.  If we assume that nearly all applications are approved (based on the experience of other states), and assuming that about 20% of licensees fail to renew, die, or move out of state, it seems a good guess that there are at least 406,000 active licenses.

Indiana 12/1/2009: "more than 318,000 handgun permit holders in Indiana"

Kansas 4/1/2011: 32,268

Kentucky 2010: It's a bit unclear from the language what is the current active number, but it would appear to be 191,555

Louisiana 2009, p. 1: 40,302 That's the number originally issued: have to take away 344 permits revoked.

Maryland 2/6/11: "about 47,000"

Michigan 9/7/2011: 283,764 (a slightly confusing report, since it totals new and renewals, but I think this is the number currently active).  I'm not so sure now: it is not clear whether renewals includes some of the new applications, or if this is just current activity.

Minnesota 8/31/2011: 86,854

Missouri 9/13/2011, p. 4: 124,577

Nebraska 9/26/2011: 15,279

North Carolina 6/30/2011: 228,072


Ohio 6/30/2011: 243,121 active

Pennsylvania 2010, p. 6: 142,477.  This is the number issued in 2010, and licenses are good for five years.  Assume that about 20% of licensees fail to renew, die, or move out of state; this yields about 569,000 valid licenses.

Rhode Island 2009: 4,148

South Carolina FY 2009-2010: 118,236

South Dakota 2011: 58,287

Tennessee 1/1/2011, p. 261: 307,816

Utah 3/31/2011: 293,651

Virginia 12/31/2010, p. 13: 238,395

Washington 05/19/2011: 337,503

Wyoming 2010 p. 62: 21,792

My spreadsheet totals 5,477,213 licensees in the twenty-five states for which we have either an exact number, or a reasonable estimate based on annual issuance, number of years for which licenses are issued, and an assumption that 80% of licenses renew or remain a resident.  (Colorado's data is just not useful as it stands.)

Some states, such as Washington, issue permits to non-residents, and this may create some "double counting."  This total does not include data from a number of states that are shall issue and where gun ownership is very common, such as Colorado, West Virginia, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico.  It also includes several states that are emphatically not shall-issue, such as California and Maryland.

53 comments:

  1. Kentucky, 205,000+ and that's from a 2010 report. It's a pdf at

    http://www.kentuckystatepolice.org/ccdw/pdf/2010_CCDW_Annual_Report.pdf

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  2. And here's the link to Ohio's stats

    http://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/enforcement/concealed-carry/concealed-carry-statistics

    I travel back/forth between KY & OH a lot and I was sure glad to see Ohio finally pass CCW law (we're reciprocal). I used to leave the Sig in the glove box when in Ohio but even that was illegal. Again, glad those Buckeyes finally got CCW passed.

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  3. Information about Ohio is here - http://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Enforcement/Concealed-Carry/Concealed-Carry-Statistics

    They don't have a nice total, but I think it is somewhere around 250,000.

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  4. Florida has twice as many as Texas? something doesn't sound right....

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  5. MN's BCA publishes a report, annually, but their monthly numbers are available on request.

    Rather than have dozens of bloggers making such requests, every month, Andrew Rothenberg at the Minnesota Association of Defenseive Firearm Instructors suggested that they provide him with the numbers, so that he could post them publicly.

    His site is:

    http://www.madfi.org/permitcount.asp

    The current count of valid permits in MN is 86.854, as of 8/31/2011.

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  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  7. Colorado: http://tinyurl.com/42n4b2p

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  8. Florida as of August 31, 2011.
    845,828

    http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/stats/Number_of_Licensees_By_Type.pdf

    More details at the official State of Florida Division of Licensing site

    http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/news/reports.html

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  9. California will have new - and higher! - numbers out in a week or so.

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  10. @Rorschach, We've been at it for 24 years...bit of a head starts.

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  11. It would be interesting to see those raw numbers transposed to a percentage of the adult population

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  12. Most recent info for Utah:
    http://publicsafety.utah.gov/bci/documents/2011Q2.pdf
    (page 4)

    list of all such reports in the right sidebar here:
    http://publicsafety.utah.gov/bci/brady_statistics.html

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  13. Florida is an outlier because they allow non-residents to get CCW permits, and they are reciprocal with almost all other CCW states.

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  14. Utah stastical info:

    http://publicsafety.utah.gov/bci/brady_statistics.html

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  15. I just Google'd for Utah statistics. According to http://legallyarmed.com/ccw_statistics.htm, Utah has 293,651 valid permits as of March 31, 2011. This site claims, as its source, this "Utah Concealed Firearms Instructor Newsletter" PDF, from Utah's website.

    For some reason, the same site says Vermont has no statistics at this time :-).

    If you can trust this website, it will likely be a good source of numbers. (I'm unfamiliar with it myself, so I can't say one way or the other...)

    Oh, and Google is your friend--except when it's not! ;-)

    And good luck on your research!

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  16. The current North Carolina SBI data both totals and broken out by county is posted here

    http://bit.ly/oofZ50

    That's 228,072 Active NC Concealed Handgun Permits as of 6-30-11

    Via the Wayback Machine, here's last year's data

    http://bit.ly/nbXjjh

    Which shows 195,553 Active NC CHPs as of 6-30-10.

    You will see that this represents a 16.6% increase in CHPs in only one year. Realize also that unlike Florida, NC does not issue non-resident permits.

    I took this data and turned it into a blog post a couple of weeks ago.

    http://bit.ly/oKmyxd

    and then I told my local reporter about it. She turned that into a piece for Raleigh NBC17 News.

    http://bit.ly/qaCnsF

    We put 32,500 NEW North Carolina CHPs on the streets last year alone. And the gun grabbers can't fill up a room at Duke University to watch Colin Goddard's weepy "documentary."

    We are winning.

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  17. You don't say what the point of your paper will be, but here in Arizona, a permit is no longer necessary to legally carry concealed.

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  18. This site has stats on concealed carry for a large number of states. Hope this helps!
    http://legallyarmed.com/ccw_statistics.htm

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  19. I'm aware that Arizona, along with Alaska and Vermont, do not required permits to carry concealed (in most places). This was a relatively minor part of a paper on civilians using guns in self-defense that needs a source for the number of Americans who are licensed to carry concealed.

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  20. I mined legallyarmed.com/ccw_statistics.htm for links to official sources, and I am now trying to get beyond that list.

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  21. azlib,

    I know Arizona is beautiful and you've got Roger Clyne and all but you never leave home? ;)

    Our permit numbers are useful for tracking how many people get and/or retain them for reciprocity purposes.

    I'm actually going to do like Sean and get the numbers since '94 to follow the trends.

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  22. There may be some mixed information and possible double counting here with regards to states that issue permits to non-residents (Utah and Florida are probably the biggest providers of non-resident permits). The NRPs can boost a state's total numbers even if not all permit carriers reside in the state, and some folks who may hold resident permits for their own state of residence may also have NRPs to increase the number of states in which they may carry. Also, residents of non-issuing states(IL and WI), or of may-issue states, may hold NRPs to be able to carry legally in at least some jurisdictions.

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  23. Georgia issues licenses at the county level (we have 159 counties), and AFAIK there is not an official State tally. Here is some info gleaned from the yearly report of the Administrative Office of the Courts, taken from the georgiapacking.org website. I checked, and 2010 numbers are not yet available at AOC. Licenses are valid for 5 years.

    http://georgiapacking.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=16761&hilit=total+licenses+issued

    This link seems to be numbers for 2009.

    http://www.georgiacourts.org/files/Prob ... cation.pdf

    92,452 GFLs issued.

    Adding up the totals of the prior 5 reports begets:

    92,452 2009
    101,656 2008
    58,396 2007
    56,833 2006
    59,650 2005
    368,987 total

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  24. I assume you saw this page, containing the link the MI State Police reports on CCW permits.

    http://www.michigan.gov/msp/0,4643,7-123-1591_3503_4654-77621--,00.html

    The MI State Police were required to issue a yearly report by the law which enabled Shall-Issue CCW permits.

    To double-check the numbers in the link you posted, I grabbed all the numbers from the yearly report. While over 400000 permits have been issued, about 240000 permits were issued in the last 5 years.

    Since the permit has a maximum of a 5-year limit, I assume that the reality is close to 240000 active permits. However, we don't have the yearly report for the period from July/2010 to June/2011. But the monthly report you linked comes up close to that (~270000), which leads me to believe that you already have the best number for active CCW permits in Michigan.

    Wish I could claim to have provided you with new data. Anyway, it looks (to my eyes) that you already have the best data available for Michigan.

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  25. No question that there is double counting because of non-resident permits. I have permits from five states other than my state of residence--although I suspect that I am a little unusual in having permits from this many states.

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  26. Just to add one more comment on Michigan:

    I don't think that Michigan issues non-resident permits. (Happily for visitors, Michigan honors any permit issued by the visitor's home state. )

    If you want to categorize the numbers by states which issue non-resident permits vs. states that only issue permits to residents, that data may help.

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  27. Clayton,
    I don't have the info but I started a thread on NES for the new england area. These guys will come up with the data you need. Also, keep in mind that in MA the permits are both carry and possession so our permit numbers will look pretty good but there is an asterisk on that.
    http://www.northeastshooters.com/vbulletin/threads/141437-Researcher-looking-for-the-of-MA-NH-ME-RI-and-CT-permits-issued

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  28. I don't think a site exists where Maryland posts active CCW stats but I can give you a couple of sources with somewhat recent estimates.

    On 2/6/11: "Greg Shipley, a spokesman with the Maryland State Police, said there are about 47,000 active concealed carry permit holders in Maryland."
    From: http://www.carrollcountytimes.com/news/local/state-laws-on-handgun-permits-spark-debate-among-legislature-residents/article_785af6ca-318f-11e0-8592-001cc4c03286.html

    On 8/15/2010: "As of July 31 [2010], there are 47,471 active concealed-carry permits."
    From: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/14/AR2010081402547_pf.html

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  29. Texas, 461,724 active concealed handgun licenses as of 12/30/10.

    http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/PDF/ActLicAndInstr/ActiveLicandInstr2010.pdf

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  30. Clayton,

    Per the Alaska Dept. of Public Safety, as of right now there are 6,990 active permits.

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  31. Matthew: was that a phone conversation you had with someone there? I need something that I can cite in what is effectively the same as a law review article.

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  32. http://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/2010CCWReport

    Since the implementation of Ohio’s concealed handgun law in April 2004,the state has issued 246,760 regular concealed carry licenses. In 2010, county sherifs issued 60,881 regular licenses (47,337 new licenses and 13,544 renewal licenses) and 68 temporary licenses.

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  33. http://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/2010CCWReport

    Since the implementation of Ohio’s concealed handgun law in April 2004, the state has issued 246,760 regular concealed carry licenses. In 2010, county sherifs issued 60,881 regular licenses (47,337 new licenses and 13,544 renewal licenses) and 68 temporary licenses.

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  34. With all the reciprocity going on the number of carriers in a given state could theoretically be even higher than the number of CCW licenses issued by a given state.

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  35. Clayton,

    Both a phone conversation with the lady who handles all the permits and an email exchange with one of their (Dept. of Public Safety) PIO's.

    I can forward you the emails if you like.

    Matthew

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  36. I will inquire about carry permits via a prior contact with the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department's Gun Control Unit (the city's PD, not the transit police). Good luck on this project: I'll have to get back to you.

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  37. For CT, I think you can contact the Office of Legislative Research to make an official request. Dept. of Public Safety should also have the info, but I don't know if they provide those numbers.

    http://www.cga.ct.gov/olr/
    http://ct.gov/dps

    Another resource is the Coalition of CT Sportsmen:

    info@ctsportsmen.com

    Finally note that CT has resident & nonresident permits if you wish to request the numbers separately. CT does not reciprocate with any other states, so there are probably a fair number of non-resident permits.

    h/t instapundit

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  38. I will inquire about carry permits via a prior contact with the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department's Gun Control Unit (the city's PD, not the transit police). Good luck on this project: I'll have to get back to you.

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  39. Yes, Matthew, forward me the email that you received. It won't be published; I just need the details on file.

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  40. Clayton,

    This Bloomington Indiana Newspaper, the Herald-Telephone (or Horrible-Terrible, as we called it when I was at IU), has a 2009 article that says there were more than 316,000 licenses issued at that time.
    http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2009/12/01/news.688226.sto

    There is a link in the article to a database of license holders (!), based on info fom the Indiana State Police; I do not know if the H-T keeps it updated. It requires a $6.95 subscription (for one month) to access the database.

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  41. Based on an article written by Dave Workman, as of May 19, the number of concealed pistol licenses in Washington State was 337,503.

    Daves Article is at http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-seattle/news-flash-more-than-335k-washingtonians-licensed-to-carry

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  42. Hi there,

    Not sure what you are using this data for, but keep in mind that Arizona does not require permits for concealed carry anymore.

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  43. 243,000 Ohio
    http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/7953

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  44. Connecticut doesn't post the information, but we are over 160,000 permit holders now.

    That is straight from the mouth of the DPS' SFLU.

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  45. Clayton,
    Washington Stats:
    337,336 as of May 19th, 2011.

    Barron

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  46. Not sure, but it's rumored that NJ has around 2,500 CCW/OCW permit holders. It's all confidential information, so it's hard to confirm. But then again, 99.9% of those permit holders are retired LEO's or armed security.

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  47. As of May 2011, there were 339,503 in WA state.

    http://www.waguns.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=979

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  48. Number of CHP's issued in Nebraska as of 9/26/2011: 15,279

    Couldn't find any stats online, so I called the Nebraska State Patrol. Spoke with Deb Collins (402-471-4545), who is their Public Info Officer.

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  49. http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/7953

    Ohio's number was 243,121 at the end of June

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  50. Clayton,
    MA had 240K LTCs in 2007. Many of these would be restricted so they are just possession permits. If you want more info PM me off of that site or through the email I am posting here with.

    http://www.northeastshooters.com/vbulletin/threads/141437-Researcher-looking-for-the-of-MA-NH-ME-RI-and-CT-permits-issued?p=2050164&viewfull=1#post2050164

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