Not only have most states become “Shall Issue” for carry permits, but an increasing number have dropped all permit requirements altogether. According to the presumption that more guns means more gun crime, this should have led to a skyrocketing rate of murder and injury by gunfire. Yet to the best of my knowledge, this simply hasn’t happened. My question to gun control advocates is why did the “Dodge City” predictions fail to come to pass? Now a number of people may say that the current gun violence rate is already unacceptably high, but that’s not what I am asking. My question is, following the loosening of gun laws, why didn’t things get dramatically worse?
Because the laws couldn’t have gotten noticeably any looser than they’ve been for a long time. Permits used to be a joke and are no longer required? What difference does that make?
The question is why you think there’s been a real change. And why you’re not presenting actual data beyond asserting “the best of your knowledge” - that makes your reason for starting the thread look more like gloating than exploration.
Exactly how many more guns are in circulation now than “before”? Without knowing that, there is no way to determine if crime should have “skyrocketed” or not.
Since NICS started in 1998, its first full year of operation was 1999. Here are the record of NICS checks:
1999 9,138,123
2000 8,543,037
2001 8,910,191
2002 8,454,322
2003 8,481,588
2004 8,687,671
2005 8,952,945
2006 10,036,933
2007 11,177,335
2008 12,709,023
2009 14,033,824
2010 14,409,616
2011 16,454,951
2012 19,592,303
2013 21,093,273
2014 20,968,547
2015 23,141,970
The link says* “These statistics represent the number of firearm background checks initiated through the NICS. They do not represent the number of firearms sold. Based on varying state laws and purchase scenarios, a one-to-one correlation cannot be made between a firearm background check and a firearm sale.”*
This is a weakness in using these figures, however directionally it does show checks have been increasing. If we think NICS checks correlate in some way to sales, then directionally sales have been increasing.
Over that same time period (1999-2015)
Year 1986 1999 2015
Unrestricted Carry: 1 1 7
Shall Issue: 8 30 35
May Issue: 25 12 8
No Issue: 16 7 0
There’s probably a lot more factors to consider though this does represent actual data over the time period in question.
Thanks, Bone. You’re a champ!
Can we consider that an upper bound? Of course it does not include sales not requiring a background check (gun show “loop hole” sales)?
Anyway, let’s say there are 14M more guns in the US than there were ~15 years ago. Isn’t that something on the order of a 5% increase? Not what I would call “skyrocket” territory.
N.B. IANAGCA. Far from it. Just for the record!!
Missed the edit window. That was supposed to be IANAGA (I am not a gun advocate).
I’m perfectly OK with gun control as long as it’s consistent with the 2nd, and I’d be OK with getting rid of the 2nd if it were possible.
My understanding is that much of the increase in sales can be attributed to current owners purchasing additional firearms. I’m making dinner, and will look it up in a bit, but anyone got some numbers on that handy?
I’m not sure if that makes any difference…but I think there is an argument to be made that “more guns” could mean “more people with guns.”
John, if I understand the NICS numbers above, I think you have to sum them - giving 225M checks that might represent a purchase between 1999 and 2015.
Seems to me that to answer the OP one would need figures on the change in numbers of people actually carrying. Are there any statistics on that?
Perhaps it is such a PITA to carry that we are not really seeing anything skyrocket.
The only local effect of the (minor) loosening of laws I’ve seen is several local stores and bars have posted BIG signs saying no one is allowed to bring guns into their establishments ever for any reason. I think most people (aka sane people) have no interest whatsoever in packing around guns.
I’ve seen a lot of conflicting reports on this and I’m not convinced the numbers are lopsided either way. I know that Bloomberg shills like to put out stories downplaying any expansion in gun culture, and the opposite side does the same.
One thing is for certain, gun manufacturers have created quite a few jobs in recent years. Obama has been a job creator on that front. Something like 100K jobs in the firearms industry during his term.
I expect the increase in NICS to reflect both increases to existing firearms and first time buyers. I couldn’t say the proportion. Many surveys show the number of households with a gun declining. Though I do suspect there is underreporting, but there’s no way to know if that’s a new phenomenon.
This speaks to permits, not people who actually carry, though I would expect the two to be directionally consistent.
I wouldn’t consider it an upper bound due to PPT as you note. PPT could be as high as 30-40%. Going the other way would be people adding to firearms they already have. And jasg got it right, those figures are for each year so you have to add them up. When 2016 rolls around, I will have contributed to its increase by a small amount 
Well, yes, but remember a check occurs every time a gun is sold (through a federal firearms licensee). A gun could change hands several times generating several NCIS checks, but it’s still just one gun. So if the rate at which people change or trade up their firearms increases, that will generate more NCIS checks regardless of whether the absolute number of firearms in circulation is going up, going down or remaining stable.
My hunch is that if people are trading their firearms more actively then the number of firearms in circulation will also be going up, but it’s hard to know exactly how much of the rise in NCIS checks is attributable to new firearms entering the system, and how much to existing firearms being traded.
Another factor is that we need a handle on how many firearms are leaving the system, or simply being put away and never used like last year’s phone because the owner has acquired a spiffier model. That’s not to say that your never-used old gun couldn’t re-enter circulation when your inquisitive six-year old finds it on top of the wardrobe, but assuming that most gun owners do in fact act responsibly and keep their unused guns locked away there must be a large pool of guns which in fact are not actively used or carried. And any increase in the active gun pool through the sale of new weapons has to be set against the reduction in the gun pool through the effective “retirement” of older weapons.
Ah, I can see you’re right. I was misreading the stats. I guess we just need to see some data on total number of guns in 1999 vs total number of guns in 2015. You’d think those stats would exist somewhere in the NRA database. Do they publish stuff like that?
I think both ideas here aren’t viable for different reasons. First NRA membership isn’t a reliable indicator of gun ownership. There are estimated 4-8 million NRA members and estimated 80-100 million gun owners. Correlation may be stronger among those who carry but the overlap isn’t strong enough IMO. The two sets may move together but that’s as far as I would go.
The NRA doesn’t publish its member list.
If it’s more guns in the hands of those who already owned guns, then I wouldn’t expect that to affect gun violence statistics much at all. If it’s more people who never owned guns buying guns, then I would expect some increase in gun violence (including accidental shootings).
Do we have any data on who is buying the guns?
I would expect some correlation between how easy it is to get a gun, and gun violence, including accidents – for example, if loaded guns literally grew on trees, and everyone was sweeping guns off the streets and their driveways, then it would seem logical that there would be more bullets fired (on purpose or on accident) and more of these bullets would find their way into people than today.
Well, there are various estimates. This has a good graph at least:
Those numbers are per year. So there have been over 200 million NICs checks between 1999 and 2015. Many did not result in a gun sale (but there is a nominal fee for it so they are not undertaken frivolously) and some of them resulted in multiple gun sales. But it is probably a good idea to consider the number of NICS checks as an upper limit.
YAYYY Obama. I still remember a gun store owner around here getting in trouble for saying that electing Obama has been better for the gun rights movement than anything in living memory.
I suspect that the number of households with guns correlates somewhat with the overall crime rate and the urbanization of the country.
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I think that permit renewals is probably a better indicator of how many people actually carry.
How do you sell a new gun through a PPT? Does the NICs system pick up virtually every new gun that is put into circulation (outside of law enforcement and the military)?
Doesn’t the NICs system also pick up used gun transactions (guns already in circulation) and isn’t there some non-zero number of failed NICs checks?
Yep, that’s exactly what is happening. Gun ownership rates have been going down steadily, while the number of guns has been increasing exponentially. Probably due to a couple of reasons. First is the “OMG Jack booted government agents are going to take them all away, so you better buy them now while you still can.” fear mongering by the NRA and others. Secondly I suspect that the visibility gun rights debate has led to an increased interest in gun collecting as a hobby rather than simple ownership of a gun as a tool.
The counter to that is that many places have very lax gun laws. Are those places violence free?
The issue is whether gun ownership is increasing (more first time buyers) or existing owners are purchasing more, or some combination. A PPT sale for a first time buyer will not be captured by NICS in any state where it is not required. If I buy a gun from a dealer in the state of Nevada as a Nevada resident on two separate occasions, NICS will reflect two checks. But without 1:1 matching, we can’t tell if those two checks represent one person or two. If I later sell one of those guns via PPT to another Nevada resident as a first time buyer in the following year, there will be no NICS record of that sale yet in this discreet population the number of gun owners would have increased.
No, the NICS system doesn’t pick up used gun transactions in states that do not require a NICS check for PPT. There is a non-zero number of failed NICS checks.
Are you assuming the result? Why would expect an increase in gun violence and not a decrease or flat result?
I think the move from shall issue to constitutional carry wouldn’t have a huge impact - those that want to carry in those environments largely would have already obtained a permit, and the criminal element who would carry after the change would not have been dissuaded by the permitting system.
The biggest change in the carry environment has been the widespread adoption of shall issue licensing. In 1986, there were 9 states that were either shall issue or unrestricted carry. In 2016 the number of states that are either shall issue or unrestricted carry has risen to 42. How has the level of violent crime behaved over that same period? I wouldn’t say that widespread carry causes lower violent crime, though I think it’s clear that widespread carry hasn’t caused higher violent crime - this is the core of the OP.