This blog post is a bit strange to write, but I have two items I wanted to share with other gun researchers. The first is that I have completed data collection for a new database of state and county level records for concealed carry license applications, issuances, and denials. The second is that this is likely my final research product as a gun researcher.
I’ll quickly address the latter item. After several years of grappling with mental health concerns, I decided that academia was no longer the best place for me make my career. During the Summer of 2021 I accepted a new position in the Colorado Department of Human Services. So far I am about a month into this new position and its proving to be a good choice for me and my family. Perhaps someday I will write more about this decision process, since academia is full of “quit-lit” from those who sought tenure track positions or eventually left them. But for now, I’ll just say that my future career path is going to be very different from the academic research I have been producing. I am excited for the future, which is something I haven’t been able to say for a while.
On to the other purpose of this post: I wanted to produce a public record, of sorts, announcing a new database I had been working on while I was at the University of Denver. These data are all open access and available online at OpenICPSR.
These data are similar to those used in a paper I published at The Sociological Quarterly that explored the determinants of concealed carry weapons (CCW) licenses in Texas. In fact the Texas paper inspired this more comprehensive effort. Since more and more states are moving to no-license required CCW policies, its becoming difficulty to find data on how many people in a state or county might actually be able to carry a concealed weapon. This database was an effort to try to collect as much of these data as possible before many states decided to get rid of their own records as they changed to no-license required policies.
For this database, a team of research assistants and I used online research to explore which states appeared to have records for CCW license applications or license holders and which state agencies might maintain or have access to such data. We then wrote a series of public records requests (or freedom of information act requests (FOIAS)) to the relevant state agencies that maintained these records. In total, we were able to collect data from 27 states total with some data going as far back as 1987, and many states provided county-level data. Doing some back of the envelope math, I estimated that these data would cover a little over 50% of the US population (if one could line up all years and states). Furthermore there are some states that provided race and gender data for their CCW application numbers. A quick list of the states and years that are in this database…
- Arkansas 2008-2019
- state-level data
- California 1987-2007, 2012-2019
- county-level data
- Colorado 2003-2019
- county-level data
- Connecticut 1990-2019
- county-level data, with sex and race categories
- Florida 1987-2019
- county-level data
- Illinois 2014-2020
- county-level data
- Indiana 2012-2020
- county-level data, with sex categories
- Iowa 1996-2018
- county-level data
- Kansas 2006-2018
- county-level data
- Kentucky 2011-2019
- state-level data
- Louisiana 2003, 2004, 2007, 2009, 2014-2019
- county-level data, race and sex categories exist (but are not intersected)
- Michigan 2003-2019
- county-level data
- Minnesota 2003, 2005-2019
- county-level data
- Montana 1994-2019
- state-level data, with sex categories
- Nevada 1998-2020
- county-level data, with race and sex categories
- New Jersey 2006-2019
- state-level data
- New Mexico 2003-2019
- county-level data, with race and sex categories
- North Carolina 1996-2019
- county-level data
- Ohio 2004-2019
- county-level data
- Oklahoma 2002-2020
- county-level data, state-level race categories exist
- Oregon 2007-2019
- county-level data
- Pennsylvania 1999-2019
- county-level data
- South Carolina 2016-2019
- county-level data
- South Dakota 2006-2019
- state-level data
- Tennessee 2008-2020
- county-level data
- Texas 1996-2019
- county-level data, with race and sex categories
- Utah 2000-2019
- county-level data, with race and sex categories
- Wisconsin 2011-2018
- state-level data
I had hoped these data could be nationally representative, but I didn’t have time to explore that argument myself. In any event, these are probably the most comprehensive picture of CCW demand in the United States, and it might be best we have if states continue to adopt no-license required CCW laws.
Originally, I had planned to pursue several research projects with these data. But once I decided to make an exit from academia, I thought it was crucial to ensure that these data would not sit on a hard drive forever. Hopefully someone can use these data for good research, all I ask that folks cite it using the ICPSR citation.
Raw data (the actual public records requests), cleaning steps in Stata syntax, and clean data files are all listed at OpenICPSR. I also included memos from each state we were able to obtain data from, so other researchers can see the language of our records requests and who we contacted. Perhaps other researchers will know more about the FOIA process and be able to improve on our approach. Feel free to use or share these data as you see fit.
Finally I want to give a special thank you to the three excellent research assistants who worked on this project: Avery Stackle, Kennedy Kreig, and Abby Lenhoff, who were all undergraduates at the University of Denver and worked as very capable research assistants on this project. Avery is now in graduate school for psychology, Kennedy is in law school, and Abby is in the social work profession. These data wouldn’t exist without their work.
Trent Steidley 