Everytown for Gun Safety, the pro-gun control organization funded by former New York city mayor Michael Bloomberg, launched an interactive map this week that allows users to compare gun laws in all 50 states.
Called the “Gun Law Navigator,” the map was “two years in the making” and reports on a variety of laws under the subjects: background checks, criminals, domestic violence, drugs and alcohol, mental illness, minimum age, permitting process, and other.
So, for example, a user can select the following law (see below) under the permitting process category and see which states have it on the books and which states do not.
(Photo: Everytown)
“Despite all the gun lobby has done to stifle research, academics and reporters are working every day to understand American gun violence and how to prevent it. Starting today, researchers and gun safety advocates have a powerful new tool to work with,” said John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown.
“There used to be no easy way to compare gun laws across state lines and over time, but it now takes just a few clicks of a mouse,” he added.
While Everytown puts an anti-gun bent on their interactive map, not all the information is useless. One trend that speaks volumes about the health and well being of the 2A in this country is the fact that carrying concealed in public is legal in all 50 states. Back in 1991, that wasn’t the case. Outright bans on concealed carry were not uncommon.
Back in 1991, as many as 14 states outlawed concealed handguns in public.
By 2017, all 50 states have legalized concealed carry. Though, eight states have may-issue standards that allow law enforcement to deny a permit at its discretion.
The other half of the equation, which is not included in the map, is what happened to crime rates during this period of time. Turns out, as concealed carry became more common over the past quarter century, as more states recognized one’s right to keep and bear arms, crime dropped precipitously.
Put quite simply, “today’s crime rate is less than half of what it was in 1991,” to quote from a 2017 Brennan Center for Justice Crime Trends report.
Correlation doesn’t equal causation, but this data certainly undermines the anti-gun argument that expanding concealed carry laws increases crime. Were that to be true, crime rates would be spiking as there are now more than 15 million concealed carriers nationwide.
Anyways, there are plenty of other websites out there that track gun laws. And many of them are more robust and informative than Everytown’s. That said, feel free to check out the Gun Law Navigator. But just remember to consider the source and its respective ant-gun agenda.
Never mind. I found the link.
Where can I find this interactive map. I drive across the U.S. more than most, and I could use this tool in my bag.
Good luck getting a cc permit in Kalifornia. Possible a few counties in the sierras will issue permits, but I believe one must be a resident to apply. Hope I”m wrong about that.
I believe that at least in part, this effort should be filed under the heading that includes the statement attributed by Mark Twain to the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
I feel safer now
One of the many flaws in the website is that it does not account for overlapping Federal law. Many states simply doe not call out certain things that are already covered under federal law.
Carrying concealed may technically be legal in all 50 states just try to get a permit in one of the Peoples Republics like CA, NYC, NJ, IL, DC, etc. Unless you are an HR218 carrier you are screwed in those places.
IL is not too bad now, I got my permit in about 2 months without sending in prints. We actually have must issue CC now,
on the other hand, I noticed on the graphic they listed that in CT CLEOs can deny carry permits at their discretion, but that is technically not true.
while CT is a “may issue” state on the books, the courts have repeatedly ruled that police cannot deny carry permits, as long as the at person meets the basic legal criteria for being eligible, and the government itself has instructed the police not to deny permits. so while we may technically be a “may issue” state, in practice we are a “shall issue state”, and most maps like these I have seen actually list CT as shall issue, or qualify that we are shall issue in practice.
How can one tell if you are carrying a concealed handgun in the public?
Excellent Roger – thanks for starting my Friday morning off with a laugh!
It would be a good thing if we gun owners focused as much on reducing accidents as the anti-gun people do on removing our rights. We publicize cases in which the presence of a gun averted a crime or saved a life. Would it not be a good idea to publicize brief case studies of shooting accidents, so that we can be aware of what typical features of them are? If the rate of accidents has not matched the rate of increase in ownership, that would be remarkable and would show we were doing something right.
At least some of the drop in crime has to do with the rise in access to abortion.
Amen, brother !!
Um… okay I don’t mean to be crass, but I’m not sure what you are implying. Are you saying that the people that were aborted were the people that would commit the crimes?
not saying he is right or wrong, but the harder abortions are to access, the more poor people will suffer disproportionately. and obviously people with less money are more more likely to commit crimes than people who are living comfortably.
it’s one of the ironies of say, Texas deciding planned parenthood, or wanting to get rid of abortions all together. this will cause a significant increase in the overall population, especially over time, it will increase the number of teen mothers, poor mothers, increase minority populations(especially mexicans/hispanics), increase the number of people on entitlements, etc. the same people(generally white conservative evangelical Republican types) who want to ban abortion, are the same who sure as hell don’t want the things I listed to happen(with the exception of a general population increase, for some reason they often has this idea that overpopulation is a myth.)
though that is of course not to say that if one believes that abortion is murder that they should put more importance/value on keeping rates of entitlements, teen mothers, poverty, etc. down than the live of fetuses, I’m just saying the situation is somewhat ironic