Alabama’s motto is “We dare defend our rights,” and judging by the number of people packing heat across our state, we’re more than ready to back that up.
A recent study from the Crime Prevention Research Center indicates that Alabama has the nation’s highest concentration of concealed weapon permits.
The study found that about 755,000 adults in Alabama, or slightly more than 20 percent of the adult population, are licensed to carry concealed weapons. Indiana is second in the nation, with nearly 16 percent of its adults holding permits and South Dakota third, with about 14 percent.
There are even efforts underway to allow concealed carry without a permit, a move supported by the National Rifle Association.
Meanwhile, news of the popularity of concealed carry in Alabama comes as no surprise considering our state’s well-known support for the Second Amendment, and requests for permits are on the rise.
“The numbers are going up each month,” Elmore County Sherriff Bill Franklin recently told the Montgomery Advertiser. “But if there is a serious crime in the nation, or an unusually serious crime in Alabama or even here in Elmore County, we’ll see a spike in applications over the next few days after the crime occurs.”
The Crime Prevention Research Center also published a series of graphs demonstrating a rapid rise in Internet searches about concealed carry following the school shootings in Newtown school, the Umpqua Community College shooting, the Paris terror attack, the San Bernardino shooting and the Orlando nightclub shooting.
Because Alabama doesn’t keep statewide data on this issue, the CPRC collected information from seven counties with 37 percent of the state’s population – Baldwin, Cullman, Madison, Montgomery, Jackson, Jefferson, and Shelby – and assumed that sample represented the entire state.
To learn more about conceal carry and your Second Amendment rights, come to one of the two NRA town hall events this weekend in Alabama:
— Huntsville: 7-9 p.m. tonight, at Cabela’s, 7090 Cabela Drive NW.
— Birmingham, 1-3 p.m. Saturday, Hoover Tactical Firearms, 1561 Montgomery Highway.
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