With the number of people with concealed-carry permits now estimated to be more than 16 million and surging as more women and minorities choose to utilize their Second Amendment rights, inner-city, gun-rights-loathing Democrats are in a quandary. Increasingly, urban residents are tasting freedom, and once someone knows freedom they don’t want to give it up.
Catherine Mortensen, media liaison with the NRA, pointed out that “women are getting concealed-carry permits at a rate four times faster then men … not all states record permits by gender, but in the states that do, one in three permit holders are women.”
“Eight states had data from 2012 to 2016 and they saw a 326 percent faster increase in permits among women than among men.” — John LottMortensen was quoting new research from the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC). John R. Lott Jr., founder and CEO of CPRC, found that the number of concealed handgun permits (CCP) in the United States has jumped by 1.83 million since last July. This brings the total count in the U.S. to an estimated 16.3 million. Also, some of the biggest leaps in the numbers have been occurring among women and blacks. The CPRC study determined that more than 6.5 percent of American adults now have CCPs. These CCP holders, as data has shown for decades, basically don’t commit crimes. The CPRC found that CCP holders who were charged or convicted of a felony constituted just 0.0123 percent of the total group in 2015 and 0.0092 percent in 2016.
“In Florida and Texas, permit holders are convicted of misdemeanors and felonies at one-sixth of the rate at which police officers are convicted,” the CPRC said in a press release.
Now, in states that record gender data for permit holders, women account for a growing total of 36 percent of CCP holders. “Eight states had data from 2012 to 2016 and they saw a 326 percent faster increase in permits among women than among men,” Lott said.
Okay, now here’s more evidence why inner-city politicians who oppose Second Amendment rights are finding themselves going against the trends for freedom. Records from states that keep “statistics on race and CCPs showed that from 2012 to 2016 the number of blacks who have permits grew 30 percent faster than whites who have them.”
Still, Lott says, “Some state and local authorities display what appears to be racist and sexist biases in deciding who gets concealed handgun permits.”
For example, notes Lott, “Los Angeles County provides a vivid example of how women and Hispanics are given few permits when politicians decided who can defend themselves.”
Part of the reason for this growth is certainly a result of the NRA’s “Freedom’s Safest Place” ads running on FOX News and elsewhere. You can see them here on YouTube where they’ve had millions of views.
Politically, these trends bring to mind what the Blue Dog Democrats experienced when President Barack Obama came into office in 2008 and immediately moved to take away Second Amendment freedoms with Supreme Court picks who don’t believe the right to bear arms exists and by voicing desires for new gun bans and controls. The Blue Dogs, of course, quickly all but went extinct, which is part of what gave the Republicans control of Congress.
As more and more inner-city residents realize how fundamental their Second Amendment freedom is, will politicians wake up and get out of the way?As more and more inner-city residents realize how fundamental their Second Amendment freedom is, will politicians wake up and get out of the way? Will the ACLU now embrace Second Amendment freedom as well? Maybe not just yet, as it’s not easy to change, even when it’s for the best. But the signs are clear that the embrace of freedom is growing.
It is even fomenting in Washington, D.C. Recently, a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia answered whether a right specifically protected by the U.S. Bill of Rights could be taken away unless someone can prove to the government they really, really need it. Two out of three judges sided with freedom. The court issued a permanent injunction stopping D.C. from enforcing a “good cause” requirement that prevented residents from carrying concealed handguns unless they could somehow convince public officials they had a special and compelling need to protect themselves.
Now more residents of D.C. should be able to get carry permits and begin to change the politics, even in D.C., toward freedom.
Frank Miniter is the author of Kill Big Brother, a novel that shows how to keep government from infringing on our liberties. Miniter is also the author of the The New York Times' bestseller The Ultimate Man’s Survival Guide—Recovering the Lost Art of Manhood, This Will Make a Man of You and The Future of the Gun. He is a contributor to Forbes and writes for many publications. His website is FrankMiniter.com.
