Permitless carry increases gun thefts and violent crime
Opportunities for gun thefts increase when states weaken requirements to carry a concealed firearm and allow more people to legally carry firearms outside the home without a permit.
- The dramatic rise in gun thefts from vehicles has increased the supply of illegal firearms, making it cheaper and easier for prohibited individuals to illegally obtain guns.19
- A 2020 study using five years of data from Charlotte, North Carolina, found that right-to-carry laws are associated with increased gun thefts and violent crime.20
- A 2017 study found that gun owners who carried their guns during the previous months were three times more likely to have their firearms stolen than other gun owners.21
- A 2022 study by leading researchers Philip Cook and John Donahue found that a state passing a right-to-carry (RTC) law “elevates gun thefts by roughly 35 percent, introducing tens of thousands of guns into the hands of criminals or illegal gun markets each year. We also show RTC laws cause statistically significant increases in crime.”22
- Thirty-seven percent of U.S. households are in the Southern region, but two-thirds of guns stolen in the U.S. are from the South.23 A 2017 Harvard study found that Northeast states with strong gun laws such as Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut have the lowest rates of gun theft and are net importers of crime guns from states with weaker gun laws, including the South. “The Southern region has the highest percentage of households with firearms and the least safe storage practices. Not surprisingly, most Southern states are ‘exporters’ of guns traced in crime,” the study concluded.24
Loose gun laws that encourage carrying firearms outside the home is fueling the increase in firearm robberies, which are more frightening, costly, and deadly than nonfirearm robberies.
- A 2022 study found that firearm violent crime rises 29 percent after a state introduces a right-to-carry law, with firearm robbery rates experiencing the largest increase.25
- “The most rigorous and recent studies are showing that states deregulating civilian gun carrying tends to elevate violent crime, particularly with guns,” explains Daniel Webster, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. “The people who get permits or licenses to carry tend to be in a pretty law-abiding group, but what we’re finding is that as gun-carrying gets deregulated and more people are doing it, a lot more guns are being stolen, particularly from motor vehicles.”26