Interest in Concealed Carry Surges Following Parkland Shooting

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The media would like you to believe that there’s a new gun control movement, driven primarily by the youth, and amassing enough members to finally change the nation’s gun control laws significantly. “Gun Control Groups See Huge Surge As More Than 500,000 Sign, Donate, Volunteer” reported Forbes magazine, two weeks after the Parkland high school shooting.

But it’s not just pro-gun control groups that are growing. The National Association for Gun Rights, which claims over 4.5 million “members and supporters” on their website — estimated their online membership applications at the organization grew 30% since the Parkland shooting (and subsequent calls for gun control). Google searches for the NRA surged 4900 percent in the weeks following as well.

But more relevant, there’s been a surge in gun sales, and interest in concealed carry.

According to the Washington Times:

The National Carry Academy in Minnesota says the number of people in its concealed carry courses has increased more than 200 percent since the Valentine’s Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
“It’s kind of unprecedented, at least in our experience,” said Chris Schutrop, the company’s CEO and co-founder. “We’re seeing just a lot of interest and a lot of people taking the class — more than we’ve really ever seen before — even more than previous mass shootings that have happened or election cycles and stuff like that.”

The increase in interest in owning a gun is not because of the shooting itself, but the calls for gun control following it.

Tim Schmidt, president and founder of the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, said February was one of the biggest months — if not the biggest — in the group’s history for membership numbers and interest in its classes.
He estimated that new memberships have increased by more than 50 percent year over year amid sustained attention on guns following the massacre at Stoneman Douglas that claimed the lives of 17 people.

According to a study titled “Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States 2016,” from 2007 through 2015, permits issued by state and local governments increased by 215 percent, to more than 14 million Americans, according to the data.

Also according to that data, “concealed carry permit holders are more law abiding than police officers.”

The study compared permit holders to police, who committed 703 crimes from 2005-2007, 113 of which were firearm violations.

“With about 685,464 full-time police officers in the U.S. from 2005 to 2007, we find that there were about 103 crimes per hundred thousand officers. For the U.S. population as a whole, the crime rate was 37 times higher—3,813 per hundred thousand people” the report concluded.

Are you glad to see a surge in concealed carry permits? Share your thoughts in the comments section below! 

By Matt

Matt is the co-founder of Unbiased America and a freelance writer specializing in economics and politics. He’s been published... More about Matt

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