The startling headline knocked me out of my morning news-browsing haze. “More Than 2,500 Non-Self Defense Deaths Involving Concealed Carry Killers Since 2007, Latest Violence Policy Center Research Shows,” the headline seemed to scream at me.
“Oh, no,” I realized. “They’ve caught us. Finally, the truth has come out about how truly dangerous it is to have people walking around all over the country with concealed firearms and a bloodlust for innocent victims.”
Actually, that’s not at all what I thought. However, after reviewing the article from an organization that has never encountered an anti-gun proposal it didn’t support, I realized that’s the impression they wanted to create with the headline. The beginning of the article clearly indicates their purpose—to attempt to halt any momentum that National Carry Reciprocity might currently be gaining.
“Concealed handgun permit holders are responsible for at least 2,541 deaths not involving self-defense since 2007, according to the Violence Policy Center’s (VPC) ongoing Concealed Carry Killers project, an online resource that provides examples of non-self-defense killings involving private citizens with permits to carry concealed handguns in public,” the press release began. “This latest update comes as legislation endorsed by the gun lobby and firearms industry has been introduced in the U.S. House (H.R. 38) and Senate (S. 65) to allow individuals with state-issued concealed firearm permits to carry their weapons in any state that issues carry permits or does not prohibit the carrying of concealed firearms.”
Instead of TTAG readers having to waste their time on the report, I bit the bullet and did it for you. And now, as Paul Harvey would say, here’s the rest of the story.
From 2007 through 2024 is 17 years. Simply dividing the VPC total by 17 yields 149 such deaths each year. For perspective, that national total is four times fewer than the number of murders in Chicago in a given year. Thinking that number was likely low for any group of people, I considered moving on and ignoring the rest of the report. Thankfully, I didn’t.
As it turns out, the vast majority of what VPC calls “Non-Self-Defense Deaths caused by Concealed Carry Killers” are actually suicides. In fact, according to the figures in the report, that accounted for 1,505 of the non-self-defense deaths—nearly 60%!
The study went on to break down deaths into several other categories: cases where the carrier was convicted (561), cases where he or she perpetrated a murder/suicide (64), was the victim in a murder/suicide (24), cases still pending (83), firearm accidents (40) and cases still under investigation (11).
When you discount all of the categories that don’t match VPC’s horrid headline—suicide, murder/suicide victim, cases still pending, accidents and cases still under investigation—the final total is 625 over a 17-year period. Do the math, and it equals 36 a year, equal to about two holiday weekends in Chicago.
Of course, this assumes that VPC’s figures are even close to being correct. It’s hard to expect an anti-gun organization not to manipulate some numbers to support their argument these days.
Note that I’m not dismissing the significance of suicides, as the loss of any life is a tragedy. However, it’s clear that suicides don’t align with what VPC intended for people to believe when reporting on “Non-Self-Defense Deaths Involving Concealed Carry Killers.”
Ultimately, this is merely the latest effort by VPC to portray concealed carry as negative and those who carry concealed as even worse. However, this assertion has been proven false in every state that has expanded or deregulated carry without a corresponding increase in violent crime.
Unfortunately, that likely won’t stop the so-called “mainstream” media from running with the story, as they are in cahoots with the antis and will be working overtime to try to nip concealed carry reciprocity in the bud.
Dishonesty is a core policy of the VPC
They ‘learned” at the rear of the “Southern Poverty Law Center”.
” introduced in the U.S. House (H.R. 38) and Senate (S. 65) to allow individuals with state-issued concealed firearm permits to carry their weapons in any state that issues carry permits or does not prohibit the carrying of concealed firearms.””
BS – per the 2nd “there may be no restriction on the concealed or open carry of a firearm by a law-abiding citizen” – damn wimpy Rinos.
Why do they keep bringing up suicides? Has that worked at all for them? If anything I imagine it’s just making more people calloused to suicide. Their body their choice.
They’ll always follow that with “but muh veterans!” like that’s supposed to make me care. Sorry, but I find it a bit disingenuous that people who claim to care about veteran well-being overlap greatly with hawkish interventionists. If you care so much how about veterans we close some bases and bring the boys home.
The VPC and all these antis pushing to restrict individual liberty can go eff themselves.
Why do they keep bringing up suicides?
They need a way to pump up the gun death numbers so they can fearmonger.
Their logic: some lost soul shoots up a school which means my gun ownership puts people at risk. Also, people use guns to commit suicide which means my gun ownership puts people at risk. Therefore, they must find ways to limit my gun ownership. It makes perfect sense to the 75% of Democrats that said Biden’s open border was an accident (very recent poll). That means at least 75% of Dems are out of touch with reality. I assume the the other 25% must depend on government spending in some way. White collar welfare has been very profitable for them.
I think the logic is just PR mixed with a gish gallop.
Maxing the numbers looks bad and separating things out takes time and most people won’t pay attention to the details. Therefore, max the headline number and walk away.
Basically what .gov does with economic data. Which, by the by, they may actually lie about more than antis lie about deaths caused by bullets.
We just need more prog euthanasia to go along with their low birth rate and infatuation with abortion.
You know who heads up VPC – Josh Sugarman (Executive Director). Hes the guy that came up with the ‘assault weapon’ lie for anti-gunners for semi-auto civilian AR’s.
Sugarman laid out this lie strategy of misdirection and obfuscation in a 1988 report on “Assault Weapons and Accessories in America.” Sugarmann wrote “the weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.” – he further added that because “few people can envision a practical use for these guns,” the public should be more inclined to support a ban on “assault weapons” than a ban on handguns.
And the anti-gun have been pushing this lie, or versions of it, since ever since.
Remember that Josh founded “Handgun Control Inc”. Their motto was “All we want, RIGHT NOW (emphasis added) is a ban on handguns.” I may have the words wrong but they morphed into the treasonous bastards they are now.
This history of attempted bans is certainly interesting vis a vis handguns.
The original draft of the NFA was to ban handguns.
For a long time in modern history, ownership of rifles and shotguns was far more popular than ownership of handguns. Handguns were, for some period of time starting in the early 1900’s, viewed by the public as weapons that only criminals and police had any reason to possess.
That’s kinda wild when you consider that today (and for a number of years), most gun stores report that they sell more handguns than all long guns combined. Some report selling more striker fired pistols than all long guns combined.
The last part (strikers) not being terribly surprising given the trends in the past 20 years are driven by the GWOT, and mostly by the higher tier guys from the GWOT. Most of them are not big fans of hammer fired pistols or external safeties.
Slavery, Tortue, Imprisonment, Deaths attributed to being unarmed via Gun Control? Millions. Sicko Gun Control zealots can put that fact checked fact in their dope pipe and smoke it.
Suicide blond was the color of her hair
Taking overdoses or jumping off a chair
Superman he used a Luger
Johnny jumped from trains
Jenny swam with fishes
Making Jenny’s water wishes
Mark he jumped the bridge free falling to his death
James played with rope hanging from a rail
All in all its tragic unless your life is hell.
How many of these incidents involved, not a person with a CCW, but the use of a firearm being carried concealed? That kicks out all of the suicides and all of the accidents because the existence of a ccw had nothing to do with what happened. Yes, murder suicide (unless the carrie4r was the victim) go into the bad boy box, but still the number pales in comparison to the overrall per annum murder rate, not even considering how many of those ki9ilings resulted from the use of a person possessing or carrying illegally.
Suicide is an interesting political topic in this context given that most of the Left has openly promoted access to what Canada is calling “M.A.I.D.”, aka assisted suicide.
If what you want is easy access to self-deletion, I’m not sure that there is a more ready-made solution than a pistol in the hand with one in the pipe. So, you’d think they’d kinda support that…
Kentucky ‘Trans Woman’ Shot, Charged After Ramming a Car With Kids Inside During Road Rage Incident.
h ttps://twitchy.com/amy-curtis/2025/02/28/trans-violence-lott-ky-dad-shoots-trans-person-who-rammed-car-with-kids-inside-n2409129
Prove these degenerates are something other than insane.
h ttps://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/03/01/media-hugely-inflated-number-transgender-troops/
h ttps://www.breitbart.com/clips/2025/03/01/rahm-emanuel-as-a-kid-i-wouldve-pretended-to-be-trans-to-get-into-girls-room-but-the-issues-talked-about-too-much/
FYI Intact links are allowed now.
And of course in respect of suicides, there is essentially no difference between someone who just possesses a gun and someone who possesses a gun with a concealed carry permit.
Having the concealed carry permit means nothing, adds nothing. It’s having the gun that matters to whether or not you use it in your own suicide, not whether you have a permit to carry it concealed.
Similarly with murder-suicides, or indeed any criminal use of a gun: how would it have made a difference if the person didn’t have a permit?
In the self-defense cases outside the home, the whole point is that the person wouldn’t have had the gun to defend himself had he not had a CCW permit.
But the non-self-defense killings outside of suicides are all essentially criminal. Murder-suicides mostly occur in the home too—did they exclude those ones from the count? A person doesn’t need a CCW to carry his gun in his house! The same goes for the suicides—on top of the fact that the suicidal person could not care less whether he has a CCW permit to transport the gun, many suicides happen in the home, where the suicidal person wouldn’t need a CCW in the first place.
So, once you get rid of the suicides, and both versions of the murder/suicide, and pending cases, you’re only left with the 561 criminal convictions plus 40 accidents for the total non-self-defense killings over the 17 years. My math says that’s 35 criminal/accidental uses of a firearm to kill someone per year that would not have happened if the person was not CCW carrying.
Bug wait! I count two main subtypes of the criminal variety (of the 561): those who used the gun in earnest self-defense, but got convicted criminally anyway, and those who just went and killed somebody—that is, they intentionally murdered somebody.
Now the first type is arguable—I think it almost counts as self-defense, but self-defense that the community didn’t agree with in the end. But for the sake of argument, we can give the anti-CCWers those.
But now how many of those 561 were actual intentional criminal murders? You have to discount that sub-type from the count: 561 – (# intentional homicides). The reason is because once again if the person is going to commit murder with their handgun, it’s highly unlikely they care whether they have a CCW or not.
So I think that the “real” non-self-defense CCW number is much less than 35 or 32 per year and really all you should count is those cases where someone in self-defense shot someone but then later it turned out they didn’t have good reason to do it or there’s disagreement about it, plus the discharge accidents. Those are the only kinds for which you could say, “well were it not for the CCW permit being presen, the gun wouldn’t have been there and the person would not be dead and it was not in self-defense.”
I don’t know what that number is but it’s probably something considerably lower than 35 a year. So I agree this is a ridiculous, misleading study.