New Study Confirms What 2A Supporters Already Knew Was True

According to anti-gunners, there’s a dearth of research into 2A topics (especially those projects that bolster their pro-gun control views), which is why we supposedly need to give hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to academics for studies. In reality, there’s no shortage of research into various topics involving firearms, including one recent study that asked a question most gun owners already know the answer to: do more people buy handguns when states adopt “shall issue” carry laws? 

The answer, unsurprisingly, is “yes”.

Researchers who took a close look at loosened concealed carry laws between 2010 and 2017 have found that “Shall Issue” regulations, which remove local authority discretion on the issuance of concealed carry gun permits, contribute to a significant increase in handgun purchases. At the same time, the researchers found that in states that adopted “Permitless Carry” policies, there was no noticeable change in gun purchases. 

The research study, “The Impact of Loosening Concealed Carry Laws on Firearm Demand,” is published in the journal Marketing Science and authored by Jessica Jumee Kim of Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, and Yu-Chang Chen of National Taiwan University.

Since 2000, 11 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., have adopted “Concealed Carry Weapon (CCW) Shall Issue” regulations, removing local authority discretion on the issuance of concealed carry gun permits. At the same time, 28 states eliminated permit requirements entirely—14 states have made this change since 2021.

The many changes in regulation across states motivated the study authors to investigate the impact of loosened concealed carry regulation on gun purchases.

“Through our research, we investigate and analyze the impacts of ‘CCW Shall Issue’ adoption, and ‘CCW Permitless Carry,’ which is the least restrictive policy,” says Kim.

“We found that CCW Shall Issue adoption increased handgun purchasing with over 70% of these purchases driven by repeat gun buyers. Increased purchases were substantially larger in urban and high-crime areas. In areas where CCW Permitless Carry was adopted, there was no noticeable impact on gun purchases.”

So, when “may issue” laws are wiped off the books and the average citizen finally has the chance to exercise their right to carry, gun sales go up? That’s hardly earth-shattering news. In fact, it confirms what Second Amendment advocates have been saying all along: restrictive carry laws artificially suppress demand for firearms, particularly in those areas where crime is a major concern. 

What about the fact that these researchers found no “noticeable” increase in gun purchases when states adopt permitless carry laws? Their theory is that the change from shall issue to permitless carry may have less of an impact because “those legally eligible for concealed carrying may already have purchased guns before,” which does make some sense. No state has gone directly from a “may issue” regime to a permitless carry standard, after all, so many folks who choose to carry in permitless carry states likely already made that decision when a carry license was required (but also relatively easy to acquire). 

The study’s authors only looked at data from 2010 to 2017, however, which excludes a substantial number of permitless carry states and greatly limits the research into gun purchase patterns in permitless carry states. 

In 2010, only Arizona, Vermont, and Alaska were permitless carry. By 2017 that number had grown to twelve states, which is still less than half of the 29 states that currently allow for concealed carry without a license. Of the nine states that adopted permitless carry between 2010 and 2017, two of them (New Hampshire and Missouri) enacted their provision in 2017, while another two (West Virginia and Idaho) enacted their permitless carry laws in 2016. That doesn’t give researchers a big window to look for an increase in gun purchases, which I’d say casts a considerable bit of doubt on their conclusion that permitless carry doesn’t lead to at least a modest increase in handgun purchases. 

Still, I don’t disagree with their primary conclusion that moving from “may issue” to “shall issue” leads to an increase in handgun sales. When more people can lawfully carry, more of us will choose to exercise our Second Amendment rights, and that’s a very good thing.