The big increase in support for concealed handgun laws

Patrik Jonsson makes this point in today's Christian Science Monitor:

The view of gun carriers as law-abiding citizens seems to have traction and correlates with increasingly positive public attitudes toward concealed carry. In 1999, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 73 percent of Americans disapproved of making it easier for people to legally carry concealed weapons. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll last spring, 75 percent favored concealed carry by eligible citizens. . . .

The article also has involved an interview with me.

Arguments for concealed carry 

"I don't argue that there are no problems with [concealed-carry permit holders], but when you look at the data it's pretty hard to find any other group in the population that's as law-abiding as" permitted gun carriers, says John Lott Jr., an economist and gun-rights advocate and author of "More Guns, Less Crime." 

"The type of person who's going to go through the process of getting a concealed-carry permit is not the kind of person you have to worry about," he says. "They're law-abiding citizens who have a lot to lose if they make a mistake." 

Statistics support Mr. Lott's assertion. The number of incidents in which concealed-gun carriers kill innocent people is a fraction of 1 percent of all gun-related homicides. In North Carolina, one of only a handful of states that reveals the identities of permit holders, 200 of the 240,000 concealed carriers (.08 percent) committed felonies of all types, including eight shooting deaths, in the five-year period ending in 2011. This compares with about 2.5 percent of voting-age Americans who have a felony rap sheet, according to The Sentencing Project. . . .