Permitless Carry

Introduction

In the United States, it is legal to carry a concealed handgun in public in all 50 states. Many states require a person to have a permit to carry a loaded, concealed handgun in public. Although standards and processes vary, these states often require applicants to pass a criminal background check, complete safety training, complete live-fire shooting exercises, and be a resident of the state. Many of these states also give law enforcement the authority to deny permits to people who pose a danger to the public. These laws promote responsible gun ownership and ensure core public safety standards are preserved when people carry concealed guns in public places.

For over a century, states have recognized the public safety benefits of requiring a permit to carry concealed guns. Yet over the last decade, the gun lobby has been promoting legislation to allow people to carry concealed guns in public places without a permit, background check, or safety training, dismantling the system of responsible gun ownership. Indeed, 25 states completely eliminated their concealed carry permit requirement between 2015 and 2023.²Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, “Everytown Gun Law Navigator: Permitting Process.” See question 2. These permitless carry bills lower the bar for who may carry hidden handguns in public and allow untrained and unvetted people to carry concealed guns in parks, shopping malls, crowded town centers, and on city streets.

Concealed carry permitting systems enjoy overwhelming support nationally—88 percent of Americans think you should get a permit before carrying a concealed handgun in public.³Kevin Ingham, “New Survey Finds Strong Opposition to Concealed Carry without a Permit” (memorandum, Strategies 360, March 2015), https://every.tw/2tSNDyq.

In fact, over 80 percent of gun owners, non-gun owners, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents agree that high safety standards are critical in issuing concealed carry permits.⁴Daniel W. Webster et al., “Concealed Carry of Firearms: Fact vs. Fiction” (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Gun Policy and Research, November 16, 2017), https://bit.ly/2QJr2Mi.

“Live-fire training is critical to making sure that people who carry guns in our state know how to load and fire that weapon properly and safely. When someone wants to get a license to drive a car, they have to prove they can operate a vehicle safely. It would be ludicrous to give someone a driver’s license after only watching an online video. A handgun carry permit should be no different.”

An NRA-certified firearm instructor in Tennessee, after the passage of a law reducing the training requirement for concealed carry permits in 2019.⁵Gary Turner, “Governor Bill Lee Must Protect Tennesseans and Make Gun Safety Training a Priority,” The Tennessean, May 8, 2019, https://bit.ly/38Z4TRE. Tennessee has since enacted a permitless carry law.

Key Findings

Concealed carry permitting systems typically require training to carry firearms responsibly in public. Permitless carry laws, also called constitutional carry laws, strip away this critical safety component.

The majority of states currently require a firearm safety course before a person can get a permit to carry a concealed handgun⁶All states except Vermont issue concealed carry permits. While many states do not require a person to obtain a permit in order to carry concealed guns in public, a person may choose to get a permit for certain other purposes, including carrying concealed guns across state lines. Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, “Everytown Gun Law Navigator: Permitting Process.”—with most of those states requiring training that involves the live firing of a gun.⁷Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, “Everytown Gun Law Navigator: Permitting Process.” See question 3. This training ensures that permit holders are aware of responsible practices for handling and carrying guns in public.

Law enforcement experts, firearm trainers, and military personnel overwhelmingly agree that people who carry concealed weapons in public should take firearm training, including live-fire training.⁸Joseph J. Vince Jr., Timothy Wolfe, and Layton Field, “Firearms Training and Self-Defense: Does the Quality and Frequency of Training Determine the Realistic Use of Firearms by Citizens for Self-Defense? Facts and Evidence for Public Policy Considerations” (Mount St. Mary’s University and the National Gun Victims Action Council, 2015). In a self-defense experiment involving a firearm simulator, participants with lower levels of firearm training and experience performed worse than those with higher levels of training; many accidentally “shot” innocent bystanders or unarmed people.⁹Vince, Wolfe, and Field, “Firearms Training.” Permitless carry laws let people who have never handled a gun carry one concealed and loaded in public.

Concealed carry permitting systems ensure that only responsible gun owners can carry concealed handguns in public. Permitless carry bills remove these safeguards and allow carry by irresponsible and dangerous people, such as:

• Violent criminals and weapons offenders. In many states, people convicted of certain violent crimes and weapons offenses are disqualified from getting a concealed carry permit.¹¹Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, “Gun Law Navigator: Criminals.” See questions 7–9. But under permitless carry, people with these convictions could be legally allowed to carry hidden guns on city streets.
• People who pose a safety risk. Most states give law enforcement the authority to deny a permit to people who pose a serious risk to the community, such as those with a history of arrests for violent acts.¹²Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, “Gun Law Navigator: Permitting Process.” See question 5. Permitless carry strips law enforcement of this authority, forcing them to allow people with violent criminal histories to carry concealed guns throughout the state.
• Teenagers. In most of the country, the minimum age to get a concealed carry permit is 21.¹³Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, “Gun Law Navigator: Minimum Age,” See question 5. Permitless carry bills often let people as young as 18 carry concealed guns in public, even though research shows that 18- to 20-year-olds commit gun homicides at triple the rate of adults 21 and over.¹⁴Everytown analysis using FBI Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) and US Census American Community Survey data 2016–2020. Analysis includes all homicide offenses (i.e., murders, non-negligent manslaughters, negligent manslaughters, and justifiable homicides) known to law enforcement and reported to SHR by participating agencies. Young people aged 18–20 committed homicides at a rate of 6.95 per 100,000 people of the same age group in the US population, compared to a rate of 2.31 per 100,000 adults aged 21+.

Permitless carry legislation is part of the NRA’s broader agenda to weaken and repeal important gun safety measures, allowing more guns in public and undermining public safety.

The NRA is attacking concealed carry permits in a concerted effort to create a “guns everywhere for anyone” society, with no questions asked. Over the past three decades, many states have enacted NRA-backed laws that have lessened the permit requirements or, in many cases, have eliminated law enforcement’s authority to deny carry permits to people who pose a danger to themselves or the public.¹⁵Chris Cox, “The Right-to-Carry Movement in America,” NRA, February 7, 2018, https://bit.ly/38dfFDu. This has considerable implications, since law enforcement officers are aware of those in their communities who may have a history of violent behavior and are well-positioned to deny or revoke a carry permit when a person has demonstrated that they are a danger to themselves or others. Permitless carry is the next step in this dangerous NRA plan to completely dismantle permitting systems, allowing more people to carry concealed guns in public without any training or safety checks in place.

Emerging data shows that states that have passed permitless carry legislation are experiencing a substantial increase in gun violence.

Since many states have only recently passed permitless carry legislation, research is limited on the impact of these newer laws.¹⁶For the most up-to-date list of states that require a person to obtain a permit to carry a concealed handgun in public see: Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, “Everytown Gun Law Rankings: Which States Require a Permit to Carry Concealed Guns in Public?” But, we can draw lessons from other moves to weaken concealed carry permitting systems. Laws that weaken a state’s firearm permitting system have often been a precursor to permitless carry legislation, and a substantial body of research shows that these laws have led to a rise in gun violence and violent crime more broadly. States that have weakened or eliminated law enforcement authority to deny permits to people who pose a danger have experienced an 11 percent increase in handgun homicide rates¹⁷Michael Siegel et al., “Easiness of Legal Access to Concealed Firearm Permits and Homicide Rates in the United States,” American Journal of Public Health 107, no. 12 (December 1, 2017): 1923–29, https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2017.304057. and a 13–15 percent increase in violent crime rates.¹⁸John J. Donohue, Abhay Aneja, and Kyle D. Weber, “Right-to-carry Laws and Violent Crime: A Comprehensive Assessment Using Panel Data and a State-Level Synthetic Control Analysis,” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 16, no. 2 (2019): 198-247, https://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12219. Conversely, states that provided law enforcement broad authority to deny carry permits on public safety grounds saw 11 percent lower homicide rates compared to states that did not have that authority.¹⁹Michael Siegel and Claire Boine, “What Are the Most Effective Policies in Reducing Gun Homicides?” (Rockefeller Institute of Government, March 29, 2019), https://rockinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/8-13-19-Firearm-Laws-Homicide-Brief.pdf. States without any provisions such as violent misdemeanor prohibitions, live fire requirements, suitability requirements, or dangerousness prohibitions in their shall-issue concealed carry permitting laws see rates of firearm assault and firearm homicide that are 22 percent and 30 percent higher than would be expected with these provisions.²⁰Mitchell L. Doucette et al., “Impact of Changes to Concealed Carry Weapons Laws on Fatal and Nonfatal Violent Crime, 1980–2019,” American Journal of Epidemiology kwac160 (2022), https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwac160.

Conclusion

Permitless carry legislation strips states of essential background check, permitting, and training standards for carrying concealed guns in public. It is part of the gun lobby’s broader agenda to weaken critical gun safety laws, allowing more guns everywhere, which in turn has led to an increase in gun violence. The majority of Americans support concealed carry permitting systems that provide firearm safety training and ensure that only responsible gun owners can carry concealed guns in public.