Report: Gun Crimes Decrease in Ohio After Permitless Carry Law Passed

It seems that an armed society may indeed be a polite society. Last week, a study published by Bowling Green University revealed that gun crimes have decreased in Ohio since the state passed a Constitutional Carry law in 2022.

The study’s outcome has led lawmakers to draw some conclusions that are advantageous to the vast majority of gun owners. “The takeaway here is that we need to focus on criminals, not responsible gun owners,” said Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who commissioned the study.

Here’s how the data breaks down:

The Breakdown

The study, which Bowling Green conducted from June of 2021 through June of 2023, looked at gun crime in eight of Ohio’s biggest population centers. Researchers compiled data from Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Akron, Dayton, Parma, and Canton from several sources:

• Ohio Incident-Based Reporting System (OIBRS): An online system that allows law enforcement agencies to voluntarily report crime data.
• Columbus Police Department: The CPD helped researchers by providing them with the department’s own crime data.
• ShotSpotter: A system that records the sound of potential gunshots and analyzes the recordings to triangulate firearm discharges within a given area (like a city).

Next, researchers used the data they collected to compare the incidence of gun crimes pre-permitless carry law (pre-PCL) and post-permitless carry law (post-PCL). This is what they found.

How rate gun crimes have changed in Ohio’s eight largest cities. Image courtesy of Bowling Green’s study.

According to the data, every major city except for two – Cincinnati and Dayton – saw a decrease in the gun crime rate after Ohio’s permitless carry law was passed.

Final Thoughts

It seems pretty serendipitous that this data came out just a few days after our article on Constitutional Carry. It also appears to confirm what many law-abiding gun owners already knew: an armed society is a polite society.