For a state that seems to lean politically left, Washington has hordes of gun-toting citizens and roughly one in five is a female, Liberty Park Press has learned.
The state Department of Licensing reported that the month of June closed out with 546,398 active concealed pistol licenses. That is up 5,682 new licenses in one month, and more than 36,000 since the end of 2015, when the DOL reported 509,578 CPLs in circulation.
Making matters interesting for Seattle, the state’s liberal enclave in King County, the data shows that 97,663 county residents are licensed to carry. Of those 77,757 are men and 19,852 are women.
This surge is not an anomaly. For the past few years, Washington has been part of a national surge in the number of active carry licenses. Texas and Florida both boast more than a million licenses each.
Arizona, which has – word-for-word – the same state constitutional right to bear arms provision, is also part of the surge, even though it is one of a handful of states that no longer require a permit or license to carry. Still, this “constitutional carry” state boasted 273,186 carry permits. That translates to more than 21,500 new permits added over the past five months, from the end of January.
