Concealed Weapons

Key Point Summary

A majority of Americans support allowing most people to obtain a license to carry concealed handguns. By contrast, a majority of Americans oppose allowing people to carry concealed handguns without a license.

Bottom line: Americans appear willing to accept concealed carry when it is regulated through licensing but strongly reject policies allowing concealed weapons without such permit requirements.

Availability of Data and Confidence in Conclusions

This assessment draws on 11 unique questions from 7 nationally representative surveys conducted between May 2022 and October 2023, with a combined sample size of 12,457. The evidence base is moderate in size, but the pattern is unusually clear and consistent: licensed carry and permitless carry are treated very differently across the available survey questions. A particular strength of the evidence is the inclusion of repeated tracking questions using identical wording over time. The main limitation is the absence of data from 2024 through 2026.

Overall Confidence: FAIR.

Policy Implications

Policymakers should be sensitive to the clear distinction between Americans' views on regulated concealed carry and their views on permitless carry.

Policymakers who propose eliminating licensing requirements for concealed carry appear to face a clear public-opinion headwind. Policies that would allow concealed weapons with licensing, training, or other approval requirements are generally aligned with public opinion.

Overall, Americans are comfortable with a right to carry when conditioned on some form of licensing or oversight.

Detailed Discussion

As is true with most topics relating to gun policy, the data measuring Americans' attitudes towards carrying concealed weapons comes mainly from 2022 and 2023.

Surveys during that period asked about carrying guns in a variety of ways. The biggest distinction is between those survey questions which include references to "permits" or "licenses" as a prerequisite to carrying guns, and those that don't.

There is clear majority support for allowing people to obtain a license or permit to carry concealed weapons, averaging about 60%.

In a four-wave tracking series in 2022-2023, support among adults for laws allowing most people to obtain a license to carry concealed handguns was highly stable: 61% in May 2022, 62% in September 2022, 60% in May 2023, and 60% in October 2023 [1, 2, 3, 4].

But questions that either do not mention the requirement to have a license or a permit, or explicitly say it would be without a license, receive significant majority opposition. This level of opposition averages around 70%, with a range from a high of 80% opposition to a low of 64% in another survey.

One survey in May of 2022 explicitly used two versions of the same basic question, one including the need to "obtain a license" to carry concealed weapons and the other specifying carrying concealed weapons "without needing to obtain a license." The results: 61% approval in response to the first version, 80% opposition in response to the second [1].

Surveys which provide "strongly" and "somewhat" qualifiers find that Americans who oppose concealed carry without a permit are much more likely to say they are strongly opposed than somewhat opposed.

Bottom line: Americans do not reject concealed carry outright. The public is comfortable with concealed carry when it is conditioned on licensing. The public is much less comfortable when that licensing requirement is removed.

Impact of Question Wording and Other Survey Factors

As noted in the previous section, Americans' responses to questions asking about concealed weapons vary dramatically based on whether the question specifies that a license would be necessary. A clear majority favor concealed carry when the question specifies that it would require a license. An even larger majority opposes concealed carry when the question just asks about concealed carry with no further specification. [1, 2, 3, 4].

There were other variations in wording across questions on this topic. Some surveys specified "concealed" weapons while others did not. Some surveys prefaced the question with the premise that the proposal was intended to "reduce gun violence", while others did not.

It appears that public opinion also differs when other explicit rationales for carrying guns are included in the question wording. One question from June 2022 asked about a proposal "to reduce gun violence" to encourage "more citizens to carry weapons to defend against attackers" and found a split response among registered voters, with 45% in favor, 47% opposed.

Additionally, a question about "allowing people to carry concealed guns in more places" (without mentioning permits or licenses) produced a somewhat lower opposition (56%), perhaps because this wording assumes that a concealed carry law is already in place. [5].

Controlled testing or other experiments would be necessary to determine the precise impact of these types of variations in wording.

Trends Over Time

Across 2022 and 2023, opinion on both licensed concealed carry and permitless carry was highly stable, with little evidence of meaningful change. Support for licensed carry remained steady at about six in ten, while opposition to permitless carry remained consistently overwhelming.

  • American public opinion on licensed concealed carry shows almost no movement over time. Favorability of laws allowing most people to obtain a license to carry concealed handguns was 61% in May 2022, edged up slightly to 62% in September 2022, and then settled at 60% in both May 2023 and October 2023. Opposition remained close to four in ten throughout [1, 2, 3, 4].
  • Opinions about permitless carry also changed very little over time. Opposition remained extremely high at every available measurement point. Opposition to allowing most people to carry concealed handguns without a license was 80% in May 2022, dipped slightly to 77% in September 2022, and stood at 76% in May 2023. [1, 2, 3].
  • The results of other surveys conducted during the same period reinforced this pattern. In August 2022, 57% of national adults opposed allowing people to carry guns in public without a permit [7]. In 2023, another survey found 75% of national adults opposed allowing people to carry concealed guns without a permit, and a separate survey of registered voters found 64% opposed [5, 6].
  • The central pattern did not shift over time. From the first measurement in May 2022 through the latest available data in late 2023, Americans consistently distinguished between licensed and permitless carry: licensed carry retained majority support, while permitless carry remained unpopular.

Bottom line: The time trend here is notable for its stability. Across all available measurements, there is little indication of growing public support for permitless carry or declining acceptance of licensed concealed carry.

Citations

  1. Marquette Law School/SSRS. (2022). NEW MARQUETTE LAW SCHOOL POLL FINDS SHARP NATIONAL DOWNTURN IN OVERALL APPROVAL—AND GREATER PARTISAN POLARIZATION IN APPROVAL—OF U.S. SUPREME COURT FOLLOWING LEAKED DRAFT OF OPINION THAT WOULD OVERTURN ROE. Fielded 5/9/22–5/19/22. Accessed via Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.
  2. Marquette Law School/SSRS. (2022). New Marquette Law School national survey finds a third of the public and three-fifths of Republicans don't believe Trump had secret documents at Mar-a-Lago; Biden's approval rating rises to 45% from 36% in July. Fielded 9/7/22–9/14/22. Accessed via Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.
  3. Marquette Law School/SSRS. (2023). New Marquette Law School Poll national survey finds Trump and DeSantis leading Biden in head-to-head matches, DeSantis losing ground to Trump in primary, majorities having unfavorable views of all three, and a majority of Democrats continuing to disfavor a Biden run. Fielded 5/8/23–5/18/23. Accessed via Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.
  4. Marquette Law School/SSRS. (2023). New Marquette Law School national survey finds hypothetical Biden-Trump rematch remains close with candidates splitting registered, likely voter samples. Fielded 9/18/23–9/25/23. Accessed via Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.
  5. Pew Research Center/Ipsos. (2023). Gun Violence Widely Viewed as a Major – and Growing – National Problem. Fielded 6/5/23–6/11/23. Accessed via Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.
  6. Wall Street Journal/Impact Research/Fabrizio Lee. (2023). Nationwide Poll April 2023. Fielded 4/11/23–4/17/23.
  7. Associated Press/NORC at the University of Chicago/University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy/AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (2022). About 1 in 5 Americans say gun violence has touched their lives and even more fear being a victim. Fielded 7/28/22–8/1/22. Accessed via Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.

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