FACT SHEET: Federally Mandated Concealed Carry Reciprocity
Pending legislation would allow a person who can carry a firearm in one state to be able to legally carry in any state, regardless of the other states’ existing law
As proposed, the National Concealed Carry Reciprocity legislation currently pending before Congress would create a national system of permitless carry, which would undermine numerous state laws and law enforcement, enshrine irresponsible gun carrying as the standard, and cost lives.
Key Points:
National Concealed Carry Reciprocity does not create a national standard for carrying concealed handguns. Rather, it allows a person who can carry a firearm in one state to be able to legally carry in any state, regardless of the other states’ existing law.
H.R. 38 and S.65, colloquially referred to as National Concealed Carry Reciprocity, would undermine concealed carry laws across the country, enacting the equivalent of National Permitless Carry.1,2
Permitless Carry laws cost lives. GVPedia’s study of permitless carry legislation showed that the states that passed permitless carry laws saw, on average, a 27% increase in gun homicides for the three years after enactment compared to a 10% average increase nationwide over the same time periods.3
Since 2005, the overwhelming majority of modern academic research finds that weakening concealed carry laws increases violent crime.4
The American public strongly opposes weakening concealed carry laws, and Permitless Carry in particular. Only 24% of Americans support Permitless Carry.5
What is National Concealed Carry Reciprocity?
National Concealed Carry Reciprocity does not create a national standard for carrying concealed handguns. Rather, it allows a person who can carry a firearm in one state to be able to legally carry in any state, regardless of the other states’ existing law on carrying and possession.
Permitless Carry would become the de-facto rule nationwide, meaning states with stronger laws would have their laws superseded by states with no standards.
What is Permitless Carry?
Permitless Carry (sometimes referred to as Constitutional Carry) laws allow individuals to carry loaded, concealed handguns in public areas without first going through a background check, obtaining a license, or undergoing any training. Currently, 29 states have enacted Permitless Carry.6
What is the impact of Permitless Carry?
GVPedia has analyzed CDC data from states with Permitless Carry laws that have at least three years of data available.
Our analysis found that States that pass a Permitless Carry law suffer from a 27% increase in gun homicide for the three years after the law’s passage, more than doubling the 10% increase for the country overall in the same time period.7
The chart below shows the average percentage change of gun homicides in the years before and after states passed Permitless Carry laws, versus the average national percentage change in gun homicides during the same time periods. The analysis focuses on the three years before and after the law’s passage in each state, as all of the states included have CDC data available for every year during those time periods.
GVPedia’s analysis is in line with a 2024 analysis by The Trace which found that most states that passed Permitless Carry saw an increase in both gun deaths and injuries.8
What is the impact of weakening concealed carry laws?
Dr. John Donohue of Stanford University found in a 2019 study that when states weaken concealed carry laws, they experience a 13-15% increase in violent crime rates, primarily driven by more aggravated assaults.9 A 2022 study by Dr. Donohue found a similar increase in violent crime that resulted from 50% more firearm thefts and a 9% decrease in police solving violent crimes.10
The academic literature on weakening concealed carry laws strongly supports Dr. Donohue’s findings. GVPedia’s updated literature review of 81 academic studies finds that a plurality of research in the field finds that weakening these laws increases violent crime. Of the 50 modern studies since 2005, 64% find such laws increase violent crime.11
What does the public think about weakening concealed carry laws and permitless carry?
Polls consistently show that most Americans oppose weakening concealed carry laws, and Permitless Carry in particular.
A 2023 Pew Research poll found only 24% of respondents favored Permitless Carry, with strong majorities of both Democrats and Republicans opposing such measures.12 A Marquette Law School Poll in 2022 found that 81% of respondents opposed Permitless Carry, including 72% of respondents in states that had already passed such legislation.13
Common Disinformation about Weakening Concealed Carry Laws
The following talking points are commonly circulated during debates about weakening concealed carry laws, and are universally based on flawed — and sometimes fraudulent — research. This portion of the Fact Sheet provides a summary of the disinformation and the factual information that refutes it.
Disinformation:
An analysis of states that have passed Permitless Carry conducted by Dr. Carl Moody and John Lott claims there is a statistically significant drop in murder rates after states pass Permitless Carry, as well as decreases in police killings and firearm homicide.14
Facts:
GVPedia and its colleagues discovered severe data errors and miscoding in Moody and Lott’s analysis that rendered it unusable. When GVPedia updated our previous analysis using publicly available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s WONDER database through 2023, we found that firearm homicide rates increased by at least 27% after three years, despite a 10% increase for the United States as a whole over the same time period. Overall homicides and gun deaths also increased substantially relative to the rest of the country.15
Disinformation:
Most studies show that weakening concealed carry laws reduces violent crime.16
Facts:
The conclusion that permitless carry and weakening concealed carry laws will help reduce crime is based on an error-filled analysis by researcher John Lott. He misclassified at least two studies and included results of studies that aren’t about concealed carry laws. He included studies with severe errors, relied on heavily outdated research, and failed to include 23 national-level studies analyzing the impact of concealed carry laws.
When these errors are corrected, a sizable majority of the modern academic literature finds that weakening concealed carry laws increases violent crime, and studies conducted after the period Lott analyzed strengthened this trend.17
Disinformation:
Concealed carry permit-holders are “incredibly law-abiding,” meaning they couldn’t be responsible for an increase in violent crime.18,19
Facts:
These arguments often rely on inaccurate data that show that gun permits are rarely revoked, indicating that the holders are law-abiding. However, multiple investigations reveal that the data is fatally flawed. For example:
A 2011 investigation of two large Michigan counties uncovered that 77% and 79%, respectively, of criminal convictions of permit holders were not unreported, meaning that many permit holders who should have had their permits revoked did not.20
A 2011 investigation of North Carolina permit revocation data discovered that, in more than half of felony convictions, authorities failed to revoke or suspend permits.21
These investigations demonstrate that at the very least, revocation data cannot be relied on to determine whether concealed carry permit holders are law-abiding. Further, Permitless Carry removes the requirement to pass a background check before carrying a concealed handgun, thereby removing an important safeguard in ensuring that people carrying firearms are law-abiding.
Disinformation:
Weakening concealed carry laws helps people protect themselves with a firearm, referred to as “defensive gun use.” This narrative claims that there are approximately 2.5 million defensive gun uses per year, and that such defensive gun uses are four-to-five times more common than gun crimes.22
Facts:
No academic peer-reviewed studies that examine both defensive gun use and criminal gun use indicate that defensive gun use is more common than criminal gun use.23,24
Empirical evidence from the Gun Violence Archive reveals approximately 2,000 verified defensive gun uses annually, not 2.5 million.25 In 2019 alone, approximately 40,000 people in the U.S. were killed by firearms, tens of thousands were injured, at least 200,000 firearms were stolen, and hundreds of thousands of people were subject to abusive gun uses such as coercion, threat, brandishing, or intimidation.26 The comparison shows that guns are far more likely to be used to harm than to protect.
The claim that there are 2.5 million defensive gun uses comes from a debunked study, yet it continues to flood the narrative.
Armed with Reason: The Podcast. Season 1, Episode 11: The Defensive Gun Use Myth
Disinformation:
Defensive gun use is the most effective way to prevent injury and benefits populations that are especially vulnerable to violent crime.27
Facts:
Research from Harvard University shows that when a person tries to use a gun to defend themself against a criminal, their likelihood of injury is almost identical to if the person didn’t take any kind of defensive measure.28
In fact, using a gun in self-defense has a higher injury rate than if the person runs away or calls the police. Specifically, the Harvard study found that people who used a gun in self-defense suffered injuries in 10.9% of encounters, whereas people who did nothing suffered injuries in 11% of encounters. Surveys conducted by Harvard scholars also found that a majority of self-reported defensive gun uses were both illegal and provided no social benefit.29
The vast majority of academic research clearly indicates that gun ownership does not reduce a person’s rate of victimization.30
Recommended Reading:
Clarifying Misinformation in NYSRPA v Bruen Amicus Briefs, GVPedia
MYTH: Permitless Carry Laws Reduce Violent Crime, GVPedia
The Defensive Gun Use Lie and the Gun Lobby’s Firehose of Falsehood, GVPedia
Endnotes
1. U.S. Congress. (2025). H.R.38 - Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act. Retrieved February 24, 2025, from https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/38/cosponsors
2. U.S. Congress. (2025). S.65 - Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2025. Retrieved February 24, 2025, from https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/65/cosponsors
3. GVPedia used publicly available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Wonder Database from 1999 to 2023. GVPedia treats year 0 as the year end before Permitless Carry is passed for the purpose of this analysis, which is in line with traditional methodology (for example, if a Permitless Carry law is passed in January 2017, GVPedia uses the total number of gun homicides in 2016 as year 0 to show the effects of the law’s passage on the remainder of 2017 in year 1). https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D76;jsessionid=530A394EA54572BFD604F778A830
4. GVPedia used our own Study Database, Google Scholar, Scite.ai, and previous academic literature reviews to compile a comprehensive list of 81 academic regression analyses at the national level that examine concealed carry laws. Of those 81 studies, 37 find that weakening concealed carry laws increase violent crime (46%), 21 find no effect or mixed results (26%), and 23 find a decrease (28%). Since the National Research Council report in 2005, there have been 50 modern studies, of which 32 find an increase in violent crime (64%), 10 find no effect or mixed results (20%), and 8 find a decrease (16%).
5. Pew Research Center. (2023, June 28). Americans’ views of specific gun policy proposals. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/06/28/americans-views-of-specific-gun-policy-proposals/
6. Giffords Law Center. (n.d.). Concealed carry. Retrieved February 24, 2025, from https://giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-laws/policy-areas/guns-in-public/concealed-carry/#footnote_0_5601
7. GVPedia Permitless Carry analysis, (2025).
8. Brownlee, C. (2024, August 9). Permitless carry will deter shootings, proponents said. That's not what's happened. The Trace. https://www.thetrace.org/2024/08/permitless-concealed-carry-gun-super-bowl/
9. Donohue, J. J., Aneja, A., & Weber, K. D. (2019). Right-to-Carry laws and violent crime: A comprehensive assessment using panel data and a state-level synthetic control analysis. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 16(2), 198–247. https://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12219
10. Donohue, J. J., Cai, S. V., Bondy, M. V., & Cook, P. J. (2022). Why does right-to-carry cause violent crime to increase? (NBER Working Paper No. 30190). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w30190
11. GVPedia concealed carry literature review, (2025).
12. Pew Research Center, (2023).
13. Franklin, C. (2022, June 8). State gun laws and public opinion. Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog. https://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2022/06/state-gun-laws-and-public-opinion/
14. Moody, Carl. (2022, January 23). Changes in Crime and Killings of Police After Constitutional Carry Adopted. Crime Prevention Research Center. https://crimeresearch.org/2022/01/changes-in-crime-and-killings-of-police-after-constitutional-carry-adopted/
15. GVPedia Permitless Carry analysis, (2025).
16. Brewer, Tom; Lott, John R., Jr. (2022, January 18). Midlands Voices: Fears about carrying guns without permits are unfounded. Omaha World-Herald.
17. Hughes, Devin L. (2021). Clarifying Misinformation in NYSRPA V Bruen Amicus Briefs. GVPedia. https://www.gvpedia.org/clarifying-misinformation-in-nysrpa-v-bruen-amicus-briefs/
18. Brewer, Tom; Lott, John R., Jr. (2022, January 18). Midlands Voices: Fears about carrying guns without permits are unfounded. Omaha World-Herald. https://omaha.com/opinion/columnists/midlands-voices-fears-about-carrying-guns-without-permits-are-unfounded/article_ecc7a074-758c-11ec-b41d-c38b82131e07.html
19. Sturdevant, William, E. (2001, August 24). An Analysis Of The Arrest Rate Of Texas Concealed Handgun License Holders As Compared To The Arrest Rate Of The Entire Texas Population 1996 – 1998, Revised to include 1999 and 2000 data. Texas Handgun Association. https://txhga.org/2015/12/31/chl-study/
20. Agar, John. (2011, June 27 updated 2019, April 3). Ready, aim, misfire: Analysis finds mistakes, misunderstanding in gun reports. Michigan Live. https://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2011/06/ready_aim_misfire_analysis_fin.html
21. Luo, Michael. (2011, December 26). Guns in Public, and Out of Sight. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/us/more-concealed-guns-and-some-are-in-the-wrong-hands.html?pagewanted=all
22. Lott, John R., Jr. (2021, September 22). There Are Far More Defensive Gun Uses Than Murders. Here's Why You Rarely Hear of Them. RealClear Investigations. https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/09/22/there_are_far_more_defensive_gun_uses_than_murders_in_america_heres_why_you_rarely_hear_of_them_794461.html
23. Hemenway, David; Vriniotis, Mary. (2009 Spring). Comparing the Incidence of Self-Defense Gun Use and Criminal Gun Use. Bulletins, Issue 3. Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Injury Control Research Center. https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1264/2013/01/Bullet-ins_Spring_2009.pdf
24. John R. Lott’s own research points to the implausibility of defensive gun use being a sufficient causal force for crime decreases. At the time Lott’s data was published in his book, More Guns, Less Crime, the general population faced an aggravated assault rate of 0.18%. Assuming, as Lott does, that 2% of the population obtained concealed carry permits (and were consistently carrying their firearms) during this period, 0.65% of those permit holders would need to stop aggravated assaults annually to reduce crime by the amount projected in his own models. This means permit holders would have to stop 3.6 times the number of aggravated assaults they would be expected to encounter. In other words, there isn’t sufficient opportunity for permit holders to use their firearms defensively to reduce crime by the degree Lott’s own models required.
25. Gun Violence Archive. Past Summary Ledgers [Data set]. Retrieved February 24, 2025 from https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls
26. GVPedia. (n.d.). The defensive gun use lie. https://www.gvpedia.org/dgu-lie/
27. Lott, John R. Jr. (2020, September 8). Americans' Very Right to Keep and Bear Arms is on the Ballot This Election. Newsweek Magazine. https://www.newsweek.com/americans-very-right-keep-bear-arms-ballot-this-election-opinion-1530152
28. David Hemenway, Sara J. Solnick. (2015). The epidemiology of self-defense gun use: Evidence from the National Crime Victimization Surveys 2007–2011, Preventive Medicine, Volume 79, pages 22-27, ISSN 0091-7435, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2015.03.029.
29. Hemenway D, Azrael D, Miller M. (2000). Gun use in the United States: results from two national surveys Injury Prevention 6:263-267. https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/6/4/263.full
30. Anglemyer, Andrew; Horvath, Tara; Rutherford, George. (2014, January 21). The Accessibility of Firearms and Risk for Suicide and Homicide Victimization Among Household Members: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Annals of Internal Medicine. https://doi.org/10.7326/M13-1301
Compiled/written by Devin Hughes, Founder and President of GVPedia.
Photo by Darya Grey_Owl, via Pexels.
i find this truly terrifying, as this law would *force all the states* to conform to the most expansive understanding of "gun rights"...a direct assault on federalism/states' ability to self-regulate.