More officer-involved shootings in states that dropped concealed carry permit requirements

A police vehicle drives down a street - Study: More officer-involved shootings in states that dropped concealed carry permit requirements "The trend of more states allowing civilians to carry concealed guns without a permit may be influencing the perceived threat of danger faced by law enforcement," says study lead author Mitchell Doucette A new study from researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that the estimated average rate of officer-involved shootings increased by 12.9% in 10 U.S. states that, between 2014 and 2020, relaxed restrictions on civilians carrying concealed firearms in public. The study, published online May 10 in the Journal of Urban Health , examined the impact of changes to state laws for civilians carrying concealed firearms and, using statistical modeling, estimated what would have happened if the laws had not changed. Some states allow civilians to carry a concealed firearm with no permit, while other states require a permit to carry a concealed one. For their analysis, the researchers identified 11 states that adopted measures allowing individuals to carry concealed firearms without a permit from 2014 to 2020. The researchers removed one state from their analysis-Oklahoma-because of poor model fit. The researchers assessed the impact of lifting the permitting requirement on officer-involved shootings by comparing a state that had changed its law to a pool of 26 comparison states that still had permitting requirements to carry concealed weapons in place.