According to a survey by University of Washington academics, the number of Americans who leave their houses with a firearm or revolver on their person increased from around three million in 2015 to six million in 2019.
The study’s primary author, epidemiology professor Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, sees the increase in carry as the inevitable result of a years-long evolution in which Americans have spent less time buying weapons for hunting and enjoyment and more time buying guns for self-defense.
Furthermore, with record-breaking gun sales since 2019 and the Supreme Court’s Bruen (2022) ruling, Rowhani-Rahbar predicts the number of Americans carrying concealed weapons will continue to rise.
Rowhani-Rahbar said, “We have every reason to believe this is a trend that is probably going to continue.”
Aside from uncovering that six million Americans carry a gun daily, the survey discovered that 16 million Americans carry a gun once a month.
Rowhani-Rahbar pointed out a trend of states taking action to make it easier to carry guns for self-defense: “The country has been moving as a whole, in the past two or three decades, very clearly and dramatically toward loosening gun-carrying laws.”
A constitutional carry framework allowing carrying a gun for self-defense has been established by twenty-five states. Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming are among the 25 states. The constitutional carry statute in Alabama goes into effect on January 1, 2023.