Examining the effect of permit-less carry laws on violent crime rates in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, and Wyoming

In recent years, many states have loosened regulations regarding carrying a concealed firearm. Permit-less carry laws allow citizens who are legally allowed to own firearms to carry a concealed firearm in public without obtaining a permit. This trend is an evolution of right-to-carry legislation that swept the United States beginning in the late 1980s. Research tends to find that right-to-carry laws increase violent crime. This study examines the effect of permit-less carry laws, independent of right-to-carry laws, on violent crime rates in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, and Wyoming, the first states to adopt permit-less carry legislation, using a 50 state panel data set from years 1995 to 2019. The synthetic control method was employed to find that permit-less carry laws were associated with an increase in aggravated assault in Alaska but generally not associated with variations in violent crime rates in the other states. In sum, moving from right-to-carry to permit-less carry was not found to cause an additional increase in violence on top of existing right-to-carry laws.