Concealed Carry permits rise 25% in Washington State in last year

Huge increases are occurring nationwide in the number of concealed carry permit holders. The numbers for Washington State are here:

This revelation is currently being discussed on the WA-Guns forum, where Bill Starks, who goes by the internet handle of “m1gunr,” has posted an e-mail exchange he had with the Department of Licensing. As of May 19, the number of concealed pistol licenses was 337,503, which is a considerable jump from last year, when this column was advised that some 270,000 active CPLs were in circulation.

A check with that agency Tuesday morning brought the figure down slightly to 337,336. That’s a decline of only 167 active licenses, and there are any number of explanations for that, with the most likely being that people do not get CPL renewal notices, so they forget to renew. The active CPL figure comes to roughly five percent of the total state population of 6.7 million, but a higher percentage of adults over age 21, which is the minimum legal age to qualify for a CPL in this state. . . .

Florida had 813,127 active permit holders as of the end of April. Since May 31, 2010 when there were 729,000 permits, there has been about a 12 percent increase in permit holders. In Texas, from December 31, 2009 to December 31, 2010, there was an increase from 402,914 to 461,724 permits, a 15 percent increase. On December 31, 2008, there were 314,574 permits, showing a 28 percent increase from 2008 to 2009.

Add Florida, Pennsylvania, and Washington state together and those three states account for almost 2 million permit holders by themselves.