In 1994, when Arizona started its shall issue concealed carry weapon (CCW) program, there was considerable interest in how many and what types of homicides would result from the new law. I started teaching classes for the Arizona CCW permit when it went into effect and I immediately noticed that my students were well above average in attitude, responsibility, and civility. They always pitched in to assist in setting up where necessary, and their personal checks have always been good. When the first crime statistics became available, I eagerly digested the information. One person with a CCW permit had committed a homicide, although not with a concealed weapon. It was a domestic situation and the perpetrator was a retired police officer. The question arose, how often do police officers commit homicides compared to concealed carry permit holders? Of the two, which is more common? . . .
The dedicated civilian disarmers at the Violence Policy Center (VPC) love to portray concealed carriers as the source of all violent crime. But it my or may not surprise you to find out that a person is three times safer with a concealed carry permit holder than they are with a police officer.
Attempting to determine how the homicide rate of people with CCW permits compares to that of police officers isn’t an easy task. There are plenty of sources that show that people with CCW permits are far more law abiding than the general population. One would like to believe that the same is true for police officers, but data is much harder to obtain for them. Agencies that employ sworn officers don’t like to tarnish their own names with the misdeeds of other officers, and while a few states that track crimes committed by CCW permit holders, I don’t know of any government database of crimes committed by peace officers.
The crime with the best reporting data is homicides. It’s always a significant event that is difficult to ignore since there’s is usually a body. And the media usually report all the homicides they learn of.
I found two sources of data that seem roughly comparable: The VPC attempts to track all homicides committed by CCW permit holders. The data is incomplete insofar as it relies on publicly reported stories, but it gives us a useful figure. It doesn’t seem likely that too many reported stories are missed.
For police-involved homicides, I used a web site that tracks domestic homicides committed by police officers, and another that does the same for police-involved domestic violence. The stats are comparable to the VPC data in that they rely on publicly reported stories. Data was available for complete years from 2008 – 2011 for a comparison of the two groups.
Florida was chosen to represent CCW permit holders because accurate numbers of permits were obtainable from the Florida Department of Agriculture. Florida has the highest total of CCW permits of all the states and the number of resident concealed carry permits in Florida is reasonably close to the number of sworn state and local peace officers in the U.S.
The VPC says that Florida tops the nation in killings by people with concealed carry permits. They claim 27 total killings that are unjustified homicides by CCW permit holders between 2008 and 2011 and 14 of those were domestic homicides. That makes the rate of domestic homicides per 100,000 per year .583 for CCW holders.
The homicide rate nationally dropped from 5.4 to 4.7 per 100,000 during that period. The Florida homicide rate dropped from 6.4 to 5.2 per 100,000 during the same time. Since we’re only looking at Sunshine State CCW holders, we’d expect those rates to be a bit higher than the national rate for this period.
When we look at the numbers for sworn officers, I found 52 domestic homicides committed by sworn police officers from 2008 – 2011. Nationally for the same period the police rate is 52/2,818,924 or 1.854/100,000 domestic homicides per 100,000 police per year.
So for the data that we have, police appear to be three times as likely to commit murder as a concealed carry permit holder.
If we include all unjustified homicides (excluding suicides) found in Florida by the VPC for CCW holders for all four years, the rate is only 27/2,400,713 or 1.125 per 100,000 population per year. That’s comparable to the homicide rates in developed western European countries. It’s only 61% of the rate for police officers for domestic homicides alone.
There are no complete and definitive sources of data that will give us an accurate ratio of unjustified homicides committed by police officers compared to CCW holders. The numbers are very small and no one appears to keep track of them nationally. However, the numbers found for domestic homicide cases, which are some of the most easily solved and most highly publicized, offer strong evidence that CCW permit holders are far less likely to commit unjustified homicides than are police officers – as little as one third as much.
Data which contains links to individual cases.
CCW holders compared to general population
VPC data base of incidents (pdf)
Police-involved domestic violence
VPC claims that Florida tops the nation in killings by CCW holders
FBI site showing homicide rates by year
Florida homicide rates by year
Site comparing European homicide rates
©2013 by Dean Weingarten of the Gun Watch blog: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
The more she cries wolf, the less people will listen to her. If she insists on being a one trick pony, all the better for us.
The best thing about her is that she is nearing the end of her career.
She is thinking about her legacy, of which she will have none.
No big gun control legacy for you madam.
I want to see her Drive a16p nail into [oh you pick the wood, just NOT pine, I used 1865 barn wood, “hard stuff”] at say 25 yards. [I used the corner of a building for support]
I’ve done this with a Marlin 25sp LR, American Heritage limited edition I think I got it around 1995-96.
The only mod I did was to free float the barrel and put a cheap tasco wide angle scope on it, it’s still on today and just bagged my 25th chicken steal’in Raccoon in 2 years.
Robert,
This site is getting too tame. Can you bring back the links to the South African and Israeli models?
While I don’t think Guns and Ammo is going to disappear, I do think they are going to take a rather heavy hit on their subscriber base. These guys have perfect examples of what happens to those who betray the side they are supposedly on and yet every year it continues to happen. This is an extremely unforgiving community (as it should be), and when you make a mistake like this… there is typically no coming back from it.
I was not a subscriber to G&A anyway. Most of the stuff in the current issues has just been about how cool it is to own an Ar15 or how the 1911 is so awesome. Just talked about the same stuff over and over every issue.
Geez, like I needed another thing (other than guns) to put me on a watch list…. I collect private mint and private currencies including the infamous Liberty Dollar and Bitcoin.
This is all well and good but publishing these stats on TTAG does not get the message out to the general public. At the very least you have to get this on Fox News or to John Lott before anyone besides our own little echo chamber hears it.
Even if the FG companies start getting spun-off from the dark side of the force I am not buying until I know they have proven themselves with measurable empirical results ie I’m waiting at least three years before I will buy their products.
A quick google search shows this article and this news has spread through the online firearms community rather rapidly, I’m surprised Guns and Ammo hasn’t issued a statement yet.
You don’t like any Amendments to the Constitution there is a process to change them. However you need to learn from history. We now have a government out of control that can tell you what to buy, snoop on your every move, has kill lists, snoops on journalist, intimindates their political enemies, etc. Your failure to learn from History is outright jaw dropping. Those countries that first disarmed their citizen’s killed approaching 200,000,000 in the last century. I think you would agree mankind has not changed. We actually need to have the weapons of at least a basic soldier if we are to prevent that. You know, just like they have In Switzerland. Each home required to have a full auto weapon and ammo. They have never been invaded nor their citizens killed. Of course, they are much more trustworthy than Americans. Now loet your mind reach into that small area that is rational.
The biggest weapon almost evry family has requires no background checks, carries hundreds of foot pounds of kinetic energy, can be purchased at any age if you have the money, felons are good to go, children age 16 can use them in public if the have a license and some places require no training at age 18, and have large enough tanks to drive into a school playground at recess and kill until the kids or gas runs out. I guess we can call that an assault car. Its a self evident truth that guns including real assault rifles are used by cops and citizens every day for good to stop violent crime. According to the Clinton Justice Dept up to 2 million times per year.
Here is a self evident truth that liberals fail to understand.
The People-means the same in the Bill of Rights all of them
Keep-means I own it and you can’t have it
Bear-Means I have it right here on me and its loaded.
Bill of Rights grants no rights but restricts governments from removing God given rights.
On balance the answer seems clear enough: no.
I’ll publish material about rogue or bad cops when the story is firearms related. And fits the tempo of the site. Otherwise, no. I won’t republish material which makes the general point that police should not be regarded as “the only ones.”
Unless they get another friggin’ gun control carve out. Then sure, a post specifically dealing with that subject, quoting some of the CATO stuff.
Fair enough? Anyway, thanks for helping me clarify my thinking. As always.
Too bad the young man could not get his life together. At least he had the presence of mind not to hurt others as he left this world.
Does she also eat with that mouth?
Or not. I just discovered that an aunt is rabidly anti-gun. She was appalled that my wife and I were armed at a cousin’s wedding. The fact that it was legal, we did not consume any alcohol, and we are quite literally the most stable, best behaved people in the entire family — and have never been drunk at a family event — is irrelevant. And now it appears that she is demanding that everyone leave their guns at home at her daughter’s upcoming wedding.
If she asks me personally, I will not debate her. Instead, I will tell her that my personal business is none of her business. I will tell her that I don’t make any demands regarding what feminine products she uses, what clothes she wears, or anything else in her life … and I expect the same respect from her. After I state that, I am going to hand her the news article about the man who recently died from a fight at the location where her daughter is having her wedding and reception.
Incredible post. I’m sure our friend Rebecca won’t listen to a word of it, but hopefully this kind of thoughtful discussion will get those on the fence to come down on the side of rational thought rather than histrionics.