In its annual report on concealed carry, the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) determined that 20.88 million Americans now have concealed-carry permits—this is a 2.7% drop from 2024.
The number of citizens with concealed-carry permits in the U.S. peaked in 2022 and has now declined for the third year in a row. Today, roughly 8% of U.S. adults hold permits. But has the number of people who choose to legally carry concealed really dropped?
The straightforward answer is no. The number of people with permits actually rose in the 21 non-constitutional carry states, but they fell by a slightly larger percentage in the 29 constitutional carry states.
“Even so, our data show that the total number of people legally carrying firearms has increased, driven by the expansion of constitutional carry,” says John Lott, president and founder of the CPRC.
The central reason for this decrease is the widespread adoption of constitutional carry laws. As this was being written, citizens in a total of 29 states now enjoy some type of constitutional carry. Indeed, “46.8% of Americans (157.6 million) now live in constitutional carry states, with 67.7% of the land in the country (2.57 million square miles),” reports the CPRC.
Although no additional states enacted such laws in 2025, the impact of more state governments getting out of the way of citizens’ constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms has continued. Many people in constitutional carry states still go through the trouble to get permits, as this enables them to travel with their self-defense firearm to states that don’t have constitutional carry but do recognize their state’s permit.
The trouble for researchers like Lott, however, is that unlike gun ownership surveys that may be affected by people’s unwillingness to answer personal questions, concealed handgun permit data is the only really “hard data” on the number of people who carry we have available; in fact, this data becomes less accurate as more states become constitutional carry. But then, that is in step with the true nature of freedom—law-abiding citizens shouldn’t need to apply to the government for their rights.
So, though the number of permit holders from 2024 to 2025 fell by 0.59 million to 20.88 million, the number of people carrying is thought to be rising. Interestingly, outside of the restrictive states of California and New York, about 9.3% of adults have a permit; whereas the inclusion of these two states brings the number down to about 8%.
