Concealed carry insurance providers have witnessed a boom across the United States over the past few years.
The insurers have noticed unprecedented growth in applications, amid rising crime rates and a failure to stop criminals since the “Defund the Police” movement took hold in 2020, has driven more Americans to buy firearms for self-defense.
The latest Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision forced blue states with draconian gun laws to loosen strict restrictions on who can carry in public, leading to a surge in the market in blue states.
Concealed carry holders must obtain insurance, in case they end up using their weapons and eventually facing legal fees due to criminal accusations or civil suits.
Delta Defense, the self-defense insurance company, which operates the U.S. Concealed Carry Association (USCCA), told Fox News that its membership has more than doubled from 300,000 in 2020 to 700,000.
The firm provides liability insurance coverage in acts of self-defense as part of membership plan, along with gun-safety education and training.
USCCA’s membership was at 50,000 only a decade ago.
The surge in applications is due to the “millions of brand new gun owners in the wake of, primarily, all the riots that happened in early 2020,” Tim Schmidt, CEO of Delta Defense and president and co-founder of USCCA, told Fox.
“A lot of people came to the realization that ‘Holy cow, I need to be able to defend myself, so I’m going to buy a gun,'” Schmidt said.
Many of these first time gun owners require firearms training and education, along with insurance protection.
Schmidt added that there are some 22 million Americans who have concealed carry permits and 80 million households in the United States that own guns.
“It’s a combination of the overall society buying more guns because they’re scared and they want to be able to defend themselves,” he said. “And number two, we’re getting better at our job.”
His rival, LawShield, another concealed carry insurance provider and gun-safety trainer, has also reported a boom to its membership rolls.
“We had this combination in the last two or three years of COVID, civil unrest, gigantic increases in crime across the country—and we saw a very, very unprecedented growth in our company,” LawShield President Kirk Evans told FOX Business.
Evans said that his organization has surged to around 700,000 members since the crime wave began in 2020 and also noted that the fastest emerging market among gun owners are women and minorities.
“You could not go a week in the last year or two without seeing an article about ‘women make up the largest demographic of new permit holders’ or ‘African Americans have shown the highest increase,’ or minorities as the biggest increase in blank, or people in San Francisco running out to buy a firearm,” he said.
Liberal States Push Back Against Pro-Second Amendment Ruling
The Supreme Court ruled in “New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen,” that gun laws that required applicants to justify a particular need to carry a firearm were invalidated.The decision made it easier to obtain a license to carry a concealed handgun in a number of states that formerly forbade them, such as New York.
Other blue states, such as California and New Jersey with restrictive concealed carry permit laws, will now have to loosen them, according to Evans.
“What we expect to see is a huge growth in three of the largest states in the country” due to the SCOTUS decision, Evans said.
Many customers “haven’t fully grasped the idea of wanting to own a firearm for defensive purposes, but something brought them here,” co-owner of Cape Gun Works Toby Leary told local TV station WBUR.
“They feel like they’ve been spurred to do it based on what they see, or their own personal feelings about the world.”
Meanwhile, some blue-state governors and legislators responded immediately, by designating multiple places as “no-carry” sensitive zones, with social media and mental health checks on applicants, and intensive gun-safety training rules for those applying for a concealed carry permit.
Many of the laws being passed in response to the Supreme Court decision, by states like New York and California, are already facing serious legal challenges by pro-Second Amendment groups, as violations of their citizens’ constitutional rights.
Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed Senate Bill (SB) 1327, which allows private citizens to sue the makers and distributors of firearms that are banned in California. It is based on a Texas law allowing individuals to sue abortion providers.
The plaintiffs in their complaint allege that the provision on legal fees is a violation of their 1st Amendment by singling out “firearms advocates’ protected activity and seeks to choke off their access to the courts.”
