It never ceases to amaze me how media outlets try to frame the narrative in such a negative, anti-gun way. I want to preface my next statement by saying that every life lost is tragic and I hope we can find ways to eliminate those numbers without infringing on our rights. That article starts by pointing out 1,300+ deaths caused by CCW holders in non self defense events since 2007. Let’s look at everything wrapped up in that headlining statement. First, that’s 12 years, so averages out around 109 per year. From a purely statistical perspective, 109 per year in a country of well over 350 million is not a significant stat. I don’t have the numbers for CCW permit holders in the country (which would be the better comparison), but I’d wager a guess that that number is still statistically insignificant. Second, this article says deaths caused by a CCW permit holder. It does not indicate those deaths were caused by the actual CCW (i.e. firearm or knife), in fact, states that that isn’t the case (though they just briefly mention this). Third, and this is a big one, a large majority of these deaths caused by CCW permit holders were suicides. That’s tragic, but not for the reasons they seem to be indicating. This article was not nearly as skewed as many put out there, but was still presented with a dishonest slant and it’s frustrating how many people will read the first paragraph and make their decisions based off just that info.
Good synopsis. The general public is so misinformed. Now here’s a real article hosted here at USCCA that provides those CCW numbers for the top 10 states.
https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/blog/states-with-the-most-issued-concealed-carry-permits/
LMAO. The comments sections is just ripping the article apart.
Thanks for that bog post. I was being entirely lazy on not looking it up. 18.6 million and that doesn’t take into account the 16 states with constitutional carry. If we assume those 16 states average an equal number of CCW’s to the lowest permitting state (Tennessee at 641,000), we get another 10.25 million bringing the total number to 28.85 million. 109 a year out of a population of 28.85 million is 0.0004% of that population. Keep in mind that almost 40% of those are suicides. Puts that number into a little perspective when you look at in thr reality of the big picture. Again, any death is tragic in someone’s eyes and we need to strive to prevent them, but blaming inanimate objects just won’t accomplish anything.
Remember in school when they told you math would be useful? Well lets see if we can use it. Someone check my work and let me know if I’m getting this wrong…
US population in 2017: 325,700,000
US suicides in 2017: 47,173
US CC permit holders who committed suicide in 2017: 109
Percent of the population committed suicide in 2017: 0.01448%
Non-permit holder suicides in 2017: 0.01445%
Permit holder suicides in 2017: 0.00003%
so… 0.01445% vs. 0.00003% … 
on the whole, I’d say that permit holders commit suicide at a FAR lower rate than the average population. Or put another way, you’re 432 times more likely to commit suicide if you are NOT a permit holder than if you ARE.
I think the conclusion here is that given the relative suicide rates, you’re far better off to have a CC permit than to not have one. You are far more at risk for suicide if you don’t have a permit than if you do. This data should be a resounding endorsement of concealed carry lifestyle.
Wait, that’s not what the article is implying? 
no, of course it isn’t. The data doesn’t suit the agenda at all. but that’s no reason not to publish misleading conclusions 
So Dr. John Lott says that permit holders tend to top out at 6-8% of the population when laws friendly to permit issuing are in place for an extended period of time. (of course, many states will be much lower because they don’t have permit-friendly laws.) Because of the patchwork of laws, and the differing time the laws have been in place, I don’t think there’s a way to get a real number for permit holders in the US, but it will be south of 8%.
That said, I took the permit numbers from the link @Cloudified pointed to, and state population numbers for 2019, and here’s how it looks:
so the average permit rate for the top-10 permitting states is about 9.5%
ETA… I found some data for 2017 - here you go:
Not particularly interesting unless blatant bias is interesting.
Buried within the article far away from the headlines.
A majority of the cases received by the center are incidents of suicide, where concealed carry permit holders turn a weapon against themselves. (This is due, in large part, to Michigan’s data collections, one of the few states that collects information on suicides by permit holders.) More than 500 concealed carry permit holders have died by suicide since 2007.
The group’s data is not exhaustive, and should not be taken to be representative of the population at large. However, the report does serve as a trove of information about individual incidents spanning more than a decade where a permit holder is believed to have killed another individual without justification.
It cannot be shown anywhere that there is any correlation between having a license to carry and suicide.
This article needs to be co-opted by The Babylon Bee or some other such source with the headline “Carpenters more deadly than Concealed Carry Holders!” And cite the 109per year number vs avg deaths by hammer at over 400 (not sure what the last 12yr trend is but I bet they could get the stats)
Hack!!!..hack!!..hack! Excuse me, something got stuck in my craw.
Wait, this wasn’t the Babylon Bee?