Puerto Rico Went from May Issue to Shall Issue. What Happened?

On January 1, 2020, Puerto Rico changed from “may issue” permits to carry firearms to “shall issue” permits.

Puerto Rico recently underwent a sea change in its firearms law. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico had one of the most restrictive firearm laws of any American jurisdiction. In 2016, there were only 225,000 legally owned firearms in the Commonwealth. The legislature noticed the Supreme Court decisions in Heller, MacDonald, and Caetano, and the many cases pending before the courts. They also must have noticed Puerto Rico’s homicide rate was higher than any state in the United States.

The legislature decided to bring Puerto Rico law into compliance with the Second Amendment. In 2019, they debated the subject and passed Act No. 168. Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced signed it into law on December 11, 2019. The act took effect on January 1, 2020.

The act transformed Puerto Rico from a highly restrictive may-issue jurisdiction into a moderate, shall-issue jurisdiction. The law included reciprocity arrangements to recognize permits from the 50 states. It appears those arrangements have been thwarted by administrative inaction.

Opponents of reforming may issue law to shall issue routinely predict the change will degrade public safety. They tend to use the “blood in the streets” emotional argument. There have only been four years and a few months since the law in Puerto Rico went into effect We have the homicide rate figures for the four years before the law went into effect and the four years after. We have an approximation of what happened to legal gun ownership in Puerto Rico during from 2020 to 2023.

In the four years before 2020, the homicide rate averaged 19.95 homicides per 100,000 population in Puerto Rico. In the four years since the law went into effect, the homicide rate averaged 17.60 per 100,000 population. It is not an extreme drop, but it is a drop. The homicide rate did not increase. The sample is quite small, only eight years old. In the 30 years from 1990 to 2019, the Puerto Rico homicide rate dipped below 18 four times (1990, 1998, 1999, and 2015) out of 30 years. Since 2019, it has dropped below 18 in three of four years (2020, 2022, and 2023).

The total numbers of firearms registered in Puerto Rico are not readily available. 225,000 were reported as registered in 2016. Since then, we have National Instant Background Check System numbers for Puerto Rico.  If we add those to 225,000 from 2026, we have 302,000 at the end of 2019. From 2020 through 2023, another  249,000 have been done. It appears the number of legal firearms in Puerto Rico has increased by roughly 83%. This is significant, as the permits to purchase from 2020 on are also concealed carry permits.

The number of guns that could be legally carried in public increased by over 80%. The rate of homicides decreased by over 13%. It is difficult to square those numbers with the assumption that more guns equal more homicide. The raw homicide numbers do not differentiate between murders and justified homicide. Even a few justified homicides increase the benefit of the new law beyond what is observed.

What has happened in Puerto Rico has happened many times in the United States.  It is similar to what has happened in the dozens of “no issue” and “may issue” jurisdictions that have enacted reforms to become “shall issue” and Constitutional Carry or permitless carry. There has been no change or a slight drop in homicides. The theory that “guns are bad” does not hold when considered against objective reality.

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 retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.