[Leatherneck]

This is related to 2dogs posting of Michelle Malkin's article on not leaving home without it. My question is: How many of us are there in the USA? Has anyone got a tally? Is it a million? Half? Add CCWs to the off-duty and retired LEOs, and how big is this disorganized homeland defense militia anyway?

TC
TFL Survivor

[Smoke]

As of March 3rd 2003:

The great state of Texas had 222,496 active Licenses & 1,479 Licensed instructors.

Remember the Alamo!

[Greg L]

I've heard that in shall issue states the total # pased on the population runs between 1-4% of the population. Of that I doubt if more than half of the people with a CCW carry regularly (various reasons. Some get it only to speed up the purchase process (in some states no yellow form or cooling off period), other may work in a place that prohibits it, etc). So my best guess would be 0.5-2% of any state's population carrying at any given time. % would be higher in rural areas, lower in urban.

Yet that small # of people has a huge impact on crime statistics. Think of what it would be like if the #'s increased to 10-20%.

Greg

[Standing Wolf]

Greg L:

I've heard essentially the same numbers and guesses.

There ought to be a way to push carrying concealed weapons as the safe, intelligent, right thing to do. Remember the N.R.A.'s "I'm the N.R.A." advertising campaign?

I'm not thinking in terms of a magazine advertising campaign, but a public relations effort to let the entire nation know lots of law-abiding American citizens carry concealed firearms—and how, and why, and the good we do, et cetera.

I live in Colorado, which just passed—finally!—a shall issue law. The Denver newspapers have been doing their usual anti-Second Amendment bigotry routine masquerading as news. We need, somehow, to project a positive, inviting image of CCW from coast to coast.

I wish I had some brilliant ideas, but I'm out for the moment.

[JCOJR]

It's been reported that Tennessee has over 100,000 permit holders.

One thing we all are forgetting is all the people that carry with no permit. I have several friends that carry and have not taken the time to obtain a permit. These include two medical doctors, several dentist, two lawyers, my insurance agent, and a chiropractor.

I'm sure that is the case in several other states as well.

[Blackhawk]

Good question, Leatherneck.

If TX and TN account for 322,000, you can probably extrapolate a pretty good guess from using population figures.

Maybe add the whole population of VT...? :D

[Nathaniel Firethorn]

PRNJ, with a population of 8,000,000, boasts 2700 CCWs. Of which 700 are not retired LEOs.

- pdmoderator

[Monkeyleg]

I've heard estimates that range from 3.5 to 5 million in the 32 shall-issue states. (I think the 5 million is John Lott's number, IIRC). For our group's legislative brochure, I made phone calls to the issuing authorities and came up with a low-ball figure of 2 million.

[firestar]

I would guess between 2-4 million based on estimated percetages. Remember that rifles and shotguns do not need a CCW permit so the number of armed Americans is probably 10 times that number. 20-40 million.:what: That is just a guess, I bet there are better numbers out there.

[Moondancer]

I remember reading on a website from Indiana (not official, but an individual's who was actively promoting open carry) that in IN 10% of the population had CCWs!:what: :what: :what:

I have no idea if that is true, but it certainly made me sit up and read it twice!

Now, if all states could actually get that, think of the political ramifications!

[P95Carry]

I can't totally substantiate the figure but it does seem that figures in PA are around 6% .... this'd give approx half a million holders. My own check not so long ago, from local Sheriff's office, suggested current local uptake was about 100 per month .... so in my county maybe 1,000 per year being granted.

Whatever - the figures are pretty encouraging ........ well reflected by pretty low crime figures of course.

[Yuck Mouth]

PA has over 600,000 by now . I posted this link before to an article about CCW .It has a .pdf from the State police that say sin 2001 there were 597,000 ccw holders in Pennsylvania.
CCW Article from tribune Review (http://pittsburghlive.com/x/search/s_100480.html)

CCW figures in PA 2001 (http://pittsburghlive.com/pages/newsextra/1103gun.pdf)