Time and again, anti-gun activists continue to claim that people carrying guns increases the risk of crime. They say that without ever citing a single bit of evidence other than their own hysterics. Through it all, however, there’s been no real numbers of just how many guns there are on the streets of the United States.

Until now, anyway.

An estimated 3 million Americans carry a loaded handgun on their person every day, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Researchers from the University of Washington, Harvard University and the University of Colorado conducted the National Firearms Survey in 2015. Of the 4,000 U.S. adults who participated in the online survey, 1,500 of them were handgun owners. They were asked how often they carried a loaded handgun when they were out of their homes.

The objectives of the study were to “determine the frequency of loaded handgun carrying among US adult handgun owners, characterize those who carry, and examine concealed carrying by state concealed carry laws.”

In addition to the 3 million who carry daily, researchers found that 9 million Americans carry a gun once a month. People in that category were disproportionately likely to be conservative men ranging in age from 18 to 29 and living the south.

Four out of five of those who carried said protection was the main reason they armed themselves. About 6 percent said they’d been threatened by someone with a gun in the last five years.

Wow. It’s almost like there are a lot of guns roaming around the American streets and nothing much ever happens with any of them.

Shocking, right?

Yet through the entire period of concealed carry, violent crime rates have been steadily dropping despite media hysteria to the contrary. While this is a corollary, and correlation doesn’t equal causation, it’s still a telling fact that contradicts what the anti-gun zealots have been screaming from their soapboxes for years now.

With this many guns out in the world each day, if concealed carry was the issue it’s claimed to be, we’d see clear and telling evidence of that being the case. There would be more violent crime, but there’s not. Despite the post-mass shooting grandstanding, what we get is an overall safer society. While our armed society isn’t necessarily a polite society, it’s still a far cry from being the Wild West gun grabbers have claimed would result with a liberalization of firearm carry laws.

I mean, it’s almost like they’re wrong on literally everything. Wait, it’s not “almost” anything. It’s exactly like that.

Whoops.

Millions of Americans are out there right now, carrying a firearm and not shooting a soul. That is the norm of any gun owner, especially someone permitted to carry a weapon.

Those of us who carry firearms are not the enemy. We’re simply people who have looked at the problem of violence on the American streets and figured that while the police will do all they can do, we can do what we can to keep us and our families safe.

We’re not the threat. Now you can see why.