About two weeks ago I sent an FOIA request to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. I asked them to give me the total number of active Concealed Handgun Permits in North Carolina as of January 1 of each year from the start of Shall Issue in December of 1995 until January 1 of this year. Here’s what they gave me.
| Year | Total Active CHPs |
| 1997 | 21,821 |
| 1998 | 30,431 |
| 1999 | 37,454 |
| 2000 | 45,067 |
| 2001 | 46,225 |
| 2002 | 51,223 |
| 2003 | 56,625 |
| 2004 | 61,145 |
| 2005 | 65,012 |
| 2006 | 74,935 |
| 2007 | 85,368 |
| 2008 | 100,052 |
| 2009 | 129,332 |
| 2010 | 177,787 |
| 2011 | 211,947 |
| 2012 | 249,063 |
| 2013 | 302,640 |
| 2014 | 387,595 |
| 2015 | 430,419 |
| 2016 | 484,427 |
| 2017 | 574,618 |
| 2018 | 624,207 |
| 2019 | 654,223 |
Or to put that in graphical form
Bear in mind that NC does NOT issue non-resident CHPs. These are all NC residents applying for CHPs in their home counties.
When I moved back to NC in 2010 there were 177K CHPs and now there are 654K. That’s a meteoric rise. Let’s see if we can push it over 1 million. If everyone who had a CHP encouraged one other person to get one, we’d make 1 million by next year.