Firearms sales went through the roof during COVID and 2020's social unrest as people scrambled to deal with a world that seemed to be coming apart at the seams. Previously thought of—with a great deal of exaggeration—as the domain of white male rural-dwellers, gun ownership became increasingly diverse as women and minorities acquired the means of self-defense. A recent survey finds that many people among the growing ranks of gun owners are carrying their tools for protection.

Concealed Carry Became More Common Since 2024

"In the survey, 13.2% carry all/most of the time, with another 16.6% carrying sometimes/rarely," the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) announced last month of the results of a survey conducted by McLaughlin & Associates. "The percent who carry all or most [of] the time is virtually the same as the percent who carried similarly in December 2024. But the percent who carry at [least] some of the time or rarely has increase[d] by 5.4 percentage points (from 11.2% to 16.6%). So the total who are carrying increased by 5.5 percentage points (from 24.3% to 29.8%)."

As you might expect, needing permission to carry a weapon, in the form of a concealed-carry permit, reduces the rate at which residents of such states carry relative to those in constitutional carry states where no permits are required. But 25.98 percent of survey respondents at least occasionally carry guns in states that require permits, while 34.19 percent do so in constitutional-carry states.

Those Packing Heat Are a Diverse Bunch

The matter of who is carrying firearms for self-protection is eye-opening, since the survey's answers blow away a lot of preconceptions. Asked "how often do you carry a concealed handgun," 22.5 percent of Hispanics answered "always" or "most of the time." For African Americans the comparable number was 19.1 percent, and for white people, 11.5 percent. Asians and "other" were included in both this survey and the earlier 2024 survey, but their representation is so low (under 50 people each year) that I'm not sure much can be drawn from the answers, though they report carrying less often than other groups.

Since the 2024 survey, the percentage of Hispanics carrying at least rarely has increased from 31.2 percent to 39.4 percent. For African-Americans it's increased from 31.8 percent to 41.5 percent. For whites it's gone from 22.2 percent to 27.5 percent.

To an extent, this squares with perceptions that cities have worse crime than suburbs and rural areas, since African Americans and Hispanics tend to be more urban than non-Hispanic whites (though this is changing as the suburbs beckon to all). People in higher-crime environments are more likely to carry the means of self defense. In the 2026 survey, 18 percent of urban dwellers reported carrying a handgun all/most of the time, as compared to 11.7 percent of suburbanites, and 9.6 percent of rural dwellers.

Concealed Carry Corresponds With Increases in Gun Ownership

But the increasing numbers of Americans who report carrying concealed handguns also corresponds with the growing ranks of gun owners in recent years and their changing makeup.

The FBI reports that from 1998 to this year, eight of the 10 highest days for NICS background checks were in 2020 or later, as were nine of the top 10 weeks for background checks. Not every background check represents a gun purchase, but they track closely enough to indicate sales patterns. And the fact is that Americans are even better armed now than they were before 2020.

In a January 2025 press release, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) reported that "approximately 26.2 million law-abiding Americans, from all different races, genders, backgrounds, religions and ethnicities, went to their local firearm retailer and bought a gun for the first time between 2020 and today." The trade group added, "the surge of new first-time buyers has made the gun-owning community the most diverse population of gun owners ever. That's a good thing—as the Second Amendment is for everyone."

In particular, as noted by Agya K. Aning in The Trace, "story after story has furthered the narrative that Black women are the fastest growing group of gun owners in the country." Tracking down the specifics of black female gun purchasing patterns is a challenge, but both women and African Americans have embraced gun ownership in recent years. While the percentage of men saying they own guns remained pretty steady in the mid-40 percentage range from 2007–2020, the share of women reporting that they own guns rose from 13 percent to 22 percent, according to Gallup. "The highest overall firearm sales increase comes from Black men and women, who show a 58.2% increase in purchases during the first six months of 2020 versus the same period last year," an NSSF report found in 2020.

Interestingly, a 2023 study by Rutgers University's New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center found that many gun owners falsely claim to not own guns when queried by researchers and pollsters. As I wrote at the time, among those examined by the Rutgers group, "nearly half of all those designated as potential gun owners are unmarried urban women of color."

Other Sources Also Report Growth in Concealed Carry

I should note that the CPRC, which commissioned both the 2024 and 2026 surveys, is headed by John Lott, around whom there is some controversy. Lott has been accused of lapses in his research methods and, more credibly, of odd behavior in the use of a fake name to defend himself in online debates.

But CPRC didn't administer the surveys, which were performed by McLaughlin & Associates. The results speak for themselves, whatever you may think of Lott's separate analysis. For what it's worth, Lott links the increase in the prevalence of concealed carry to decreases in crime. The FBI reported last month that "preliminary data show violent crime decreased an estimated 9.3% from 2024 to 2025."

And the CPRC/McLaughlin survey results are in line with a 2022 paper in the American Journal of Public Health that looked at 2019 data and found "about 16 million US adult handgun owners carried handguns in the past month (up from 9 million in 2015), and approximately 6 million did so daily (twice the 3 million who did so in 2015)." Like McLaughlin, the paper found that concealed carry of firearms is increasing in prevalence and is more common in states without permit requirements.

Without doubt, the evidence indicates growing gun ownership among Americans, with tens of millions of new, first-time gun owners in recent years exercising their right to own the means of self defense. Now evidence indicates that millions of us aren't just keeping those guns in a drawer or for shooting at the range. We're carrying our guns for self-defense frequently enough that, in any given crowd, it's a near certainty that some people are packing heat.

On that note, as I've urged in the past, learn to use your tools. Get firearms training.

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