In Michigan, or in any other state that adopted permit-based CCW.
The Detroit Free Press takes the tenth anniversary of “shall issue” CCW in Michigan to lampoon the doomsdayers and doomsayers and the sky-will-fallers. That was relatively sane compared to the same milieu in Florida in the run-up to it get getting CCW quite a number of years ago — Some cops in the state were predicting such tragedy and disaster that they wanted the state to buy them machine guns, based on the curious theory that someone who would go to a building full of cops to get a license to carry a concealed handgun would turn right around and want to mow down a bunch of cops.
The sad part is that all these whacked out nuts still have jobs in spite of how wrong they were, and how wrong we knew they would be in the long run. You’re hard pressed even get something that sounds like a public apology or a mea culpa or even a “WTF was wrong with us” out of these people.
A map accompanies this article, showing the relative permit popularity per county, in terms of number of adults per permit issued. It is a reverse metric, in that the lower the number, the higher is the permit rate. It is not surprising that CCW is most popular in Metro Detroit counties not named Wayne and Washtenaw, and counties in the northern LP and in most of the UP. Even in Wayne County, the permit rate is very close to state average, though since Wayne is Michigan’s most populous county, it heavily determines the state average. What is a mystery is the low permit rate in Kent and Ottawa Counties (Grand Rapids, Holland) — Heavily Dutch Western Michigan is probably the reddest part of the state. There has to be a local factor at work.
