Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Millions more Americans will have the right to drive and walk around U.S. cities with hidden, loaded guns if freelance videographer Edward Peruta wins his fight to carry one on assignment.
The sheriff in San Diego rejected Peruta's application for a permit to take his Colt 1911 .45 caliber pistol while traveling with cash and expensive equipment in high-crime California neighborhoods. He sued, and a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court (1000L:US) ruled in February that any responsible, law-abiding citizen is entitled under the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment to possess a concealed firearm in public for self defense.
If the ruling stands after further review by the full court, it may put the scope of the right to bear arms back in front of the U.S. Supreme Court (1000L:US), six years after the justices struck down a District of Columbia law that banned handguns in the home. 
Since that landmark decision, state and local government efforts to regulate gun possession have largely survived legal attack by gun-rights advocates.
A victory for Peruta at the high court could reverse that trend and be used to attack strict public-carry laws in New York City, Boston, Baltimore and Washington. That would expand the number of people with concealed guns on city streets to as much as 5 percent, according to Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.
"It would mean that the discretionary permitting process in many major cities would be invalidated," Winkler said. "You're absolutely talking about millions more people having permits to carry guns."
Packing Pistols
To the National Rifle Association, which is supporting Peruta's case, more people packing pistols, revolvers and other sidearms may mean the difference between life and death. With 1.9 million of California's 38 million residents armed, criminals would be deterred in the most populous state because they wouldn't know who's carrying a gun, said Chuck Michel, Peruta's lawyer and the NRA's West Coast counsel.
"No one is going duck hunting when 5 percent of the ducks might shoot back," he said in an interview.
Gun control advocates say that math is dangerous, because without stringent permitting, the odds go up that guns will fall into the wrong hands.
"The more guns you have in public spaces, the more likely you are to have altercations between people that become deadly," Mike McLively, a lawyer at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said in an interview.
Crime Rates
While there's plenty of debate about the causes and cures for gun violence, the U.S. murder rate dipped to a historic low last year while the number of concealed weapons permits nationwide soared to an all-time high.
There are now more than 11 million permit holders in the U.S., and the growth has accelerated with almost 1.5 million new permits issued in the past year, according to a July report by the Crime Prevention Research Center.
McLively credits the surge in permits to a concerted gun lobby push at statehouses across the country to radically weaken restrictions on concealed weapons over the past 30 years. In 1981, 19 states prohibited the carrying of concealed weapons. Now, all states allow the practice with varying degrees of regulation.
California is among about 10 states, including New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Maryland, that give local law enforcement agencies discretion to grant or deny concealed weapon permits, typically based on whether a person can show good cause to be armed. These are known as "may-issue" states.
Minimum Qualifications
Most other states hand out permits to anyone who meets minimum qualifications, including criminal and mental health background checks. Some states also require safety training. A handful, including Arizona, Alaska and Vermont, require no permit at all.
Deregulation has been good for the firearms industry, said Andrea James, a Minneapolis-based analyst for Dougherty and Co., who tracks gun manufacturers. Urban residents and women in particular are driving the trend as public perception about carrying guns has changed and females seek firearms for personal protection and as a measure of equality, she said.
"You've seen an explosion in the last few years of people wanting to carry for personal protection," James said. "It's absolutely a favorable trend for the firearms industry to have more concealed carry permit holders."
The growing popularity of toting guns in public has prompted companies such as Target Corp. (TGT:US) and Starbucks Corp. (SBUX:US) to ask customers not to bring weapons into their stores after some did, legally, in states that allow guns to be carried openly. How far states can go to restrict open carrying of guns remains an unsettled area of the law. Under the ruling in Peruta's case, states must allow either concealed or open carry.
Illinois Ban
Illinois was the last state to end a complete ban on carrying a weapon in public after the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled in 2012 that the law infringed on Second Amendment rights. Washington was the last city in the U.S. to to be forced to give up its prohibition when a federal judge in July declared the ban unconstitutional, citing the Peruta case.
Under a court-imposed deadline, the city this week adopted a new law modeled on those in New York and other states with "may-issue" permit systems.
Whether Washington's new law can survive another court challenge depends on which side, gun rights or gun control, ultimately wins the constitutional battle over public-carry laws.