Florida Update: Concealed Carry Permits Up, Violent Crime Down
by Bob Adelmann
The recent report from ABC News that in Florida, where there are more concealed weapons permits than anywhere else in the country, violent crime has dropped to the lowest point in history, delighted Sean Caranna, executive director of Florida Carry, Inc. “We’re happy to have facts and statistics put into these debates, because every time they do, we win,” he said. Firearm-related violent crimes in Florida have dropped by one-third in just four years, 2007 to 2011, while concealed carry permits jumped by 90 percent in that period. Further, violent crime of any kind dropped almost as much, 26 percent. There were naysayers, but their voices are becoming muted as more and more states have adopted “shall-issue” carry laws and have seen their own crime rates drop as well. One of the naysayers was Gary Kleck, a Florida State criminologist who calls himself “as liberal as they get.” He said the link between more permits and less crime might just be a coincidence. He said that nationally, crime has been falling steadily since 1991 and Florida’s numbers might just be part of that trend. He warned against drawing too hasty a conclusion that one statistic caused the other. "The real problem there in drawing conclusions is that you’re guessing why that decline or change in gun violence has occurred," he stated. In a backhanded support of Kleck’s warning, Arthur Hayhoe, the executive director of the Florida Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, said “It’s difficult to attach gun control to the reduction of crime, and vice versa. We don’t know what works. We can’t prove that gun control works because we don’t have gun control laws.” Kleck has authored numerous books and articles over the last 20 years, but none garnered as much national attention as his 1994 National Self-Defense Survey which, based on a survey of 5,000 households, concluded that there were far more incidents where gun owners defended themselves against potentially violent crime than there were actual crimes involving the use of guns. This outraged liberals who thought Kleck would find something that would support their typically anti-gun posture. One such was Marvin Wolfgang, another liberal Florida criminologist who described himself as being “as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among all criminologists in this country.” He said,
Such a report from Florida must encourage Professor John Lott, who in 2000 authored the groundbreaking book More Guns, Less Crime. Lott never intended to become the lightning rod for the anti-gun forces. He began the study initially because he saw that much of what passed for valid statistical analysis in the field was poorly done, and he saw an opportunity to correct and update it. What it did was change his life, and not necessarily for the better. In his recent update to the book, Lott wrote,
When Florida passed the first “shall-issue” law requiring authorities to issue concealed weapons permits to qualified citizens upon request in 1987, critics warned that the Sunshine State would soon become the “Gunshine” State, with predictions of differences being settled by gun fights in the streets, and crime soaring. The exact opposite happened. As Guncite.com noted, “homicide rates dropped faster than the national average [and] through 1997, only one permit holder out of over the 350,000 permits issued, was convicted of homicide.” March 23, 2013 Copyright © 2013 The New American
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