VPC Releases Report Amid Congress Mulling Nationwide Reciprocity
The latest attack on concealed carry holders comes from the Violence Policy Center (VPC), a once-powerful gun control group that now seems to be grasping for relevance. Their latest report, which claims there have been “more than 2,500 non-self defense deaths involving concealed carry killers since 2007,” follows their long-standing pattern of manipulating data and pushing misleading narratives to undermine gun rights in America.
The timing is no coincidence. The release comes just as Congress considers national concealed carry reciprocity legislation (H.R. 38 and S. 65), a bill that would allow law-abiding permit holders to carry across state lines. The mere thought of such a law terrifies groups like VPC, whose mission depends on keeping the public in fear of firearms. But their own data—when examined honestly—doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
VPC claims that concealed carriers are responsible for 2,541 “non-self defense deaths” over an 18-year period. That number may sound large at first, but let’s put it into perspective. There are an estimated 21.46 million concealed carry permit holders in the U.S. That means VPC’s supposed “concealed carry killers” account for just 0.012% of all permit holders over nearly two decades. Annually, that equates to 0.000657%—a number so small it barely registers statistically.
By contrast, a study on police officer arrests found that from 2005 to 2011—just seven years—there were 6,724 reported arrests of sworn law enforcement officers. In 2023, there were roughly 720,652 police officers in the U.S., which puts their arrest rate at 0.14% annually. That means police officers are over 213 times more likely to be arrested than a concealed carry permit holder is to commit a non-self defense homicide, according to VPC’s own numbers. Yet VPC isn’t publishing reports on police misconduct.
One of VPC’s go-to tactics is relying on sensationalized media reports instead of actual law enforcement data. Their so-called Concealed Carry Killers project compiles news stories rather than official crime statistics, making it an unreliable and biased source of information. Even their definition of a “non-self defense death” is suspect, as they lump in suicides, domestic incidents, and cases where concealed carriers were not actually the perpetrators.
Even more misleading is their claim that “38 of the incidents were fatal mass shootings as defined by federal law.” There is no federal definition of mass shooting—something the RAND Corporation has confirmed. But that doesn’t stop VPC from making it up as they go along.
This kind of statistical manipulation isn’t new for VPC. In the 1980s, they pushed the idea that “assault weapons” were a major public threat, despite knowing that the term was vague and misleading. Founder Josh Sugarmann even admitted in a 1988 publication that the “public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons” could be exploited to build support for gun bans.
VPC also worked to gut the federal “relief from disabilities” program in the 1990s, which allowed people who had lost their Second Amendment rights to apply for restoration. They justified their efforts by citing a mere 2.6% recidivism rate among those who had their rights restored. But compared to the general recidivism rate of 66% within three years for state prisoners, VPC’s argument collapses under its own weight.
At the end of the day, VPC’s latest “study” isn’t about public safety—it’s about stopping concealed carry reciprocity. Their own Government Affairs Director, Kristen Rand, let that slip when she said, “For the firearms industry concealed carry reciprocity is good for business, while for the gun lobby it’s one more organizing tool.” That’s not an argument about crime or violence; that’s an ideological objection to gun rights, plain and simple.
Their logic falls apart under scrutiny. If concealed carry reciprocity is “good for business,” does that mean the First Amendment, which allows people like Rand to exercise free speech across state lines, is also “good for business”? Should we revoke driving privileges when people travel across state lines because car manufacturers might sell more vehicles? The argument is as flimsy as their data.