Texas Concealed Handgun License Murder Rates

By Dean Weingarten

Gun Watch
Gun Watch

Arizona – -(Ammoland.com)- Texas is one of the few states that tracks crimes committed by concealed carry weapon permit holders.  In Texas, the permit is called a concealed handgun license, or CHL.

The Texas Department of Public Safety has filed annual reports of the convictions of CHL holders from 1996 through 2011.   They wait two years to obtain final conviction information before publishing the totals.

The number of CHL holders that commit murder or manslaughter is remarkably low.  From the DPS reports for 1996 through 2011,  the number of murder and manslaughter convictions for CHL holders totaled 30 over the 16 years.

Link to Texas DPSpdf files, ConvictionRatesReports 1996 – 2011

DPS also reports on the number of active CHL holders for each year.   Those numbers were totaled to obtain the number of CHL holder-years.   The total number of CHL holder-years for the 1996-2011 is 4,295,434.

Link to calendar year Texas DPSpdf files Reports on Active License and Instructor Counts1996 – 2012

The two numbers give us the ratio of CHL holder convictions for murder and manslaughter per 100,000 CHL holders per year.  That number is  .70/100,000.

Yes, the decimal point is in the correct place.

The rate of  murder and manslaughter for the general population of Texas averaged for the years 1996-2011 is 6.0/100,000.

Link to site with UCR Texas murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rates 1996 – 2011

c2013 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.

Link to Gun Watch

About Dean Weingarten;
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973.  He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of constitutional carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.

6 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
James

I read an article that stated, “CHL Holders Do Not Prevent Mass Shootings”. All I could think of was well, maybe that’s because mass shootings happen in gun free zones and CHL holders follow the law. Of course the article wouldn’t allow comment.

Alan Pogue

Any idea how many CHL holders actually carry their pistols on a daily basis? I dont know many.

gerald j jessup

I do and so does my wife my son my daughter my son-in-law and my grandson

Alan Farrell

The liberal loons make it sound like we are slaughtering people left and right in Texas because we have so many guns.

Brett Thomas

This statistic also shows CHl holders are 10 times LESS likely to be convicted of any felony, than non-CHL holders in Texas….based on my crude statistics :
2011 pop of Texas (21 & older) aprox 23 million
2011 CHL holders 512k (approx 2% of pop 21 & older)
2011 Conviction rate of CHl holders for all felonies is .02% (based on the above chart, shown at bottom)

Scott Kemp

This is no surprise.