NEW YORK — Amid ongoing fear of crime, more than 13,300 New Yorkers applied for licenses to carry guns in the city last year, a near-double increase compared to 2022 — and the New York City Police Department's financial bottom line has been boosted by the permit surge, according to a Daily News analysis.

Spokespeople for the NYPD and Mayor Eric Adams’ office said this week they can’t definitively determine what’s driving the spike in gun permit applications. It’s unclear from the gun permit data how many of the 2023 and 2024 applications were actually approved and resulted in new licenses being issued.

But NYPD data shows the wave of weapon seekers started to skyrocket in the months after Sept. 1, 2022, when a U.S. Supreme Court ruling took effect that struck down a New York law that required applicants for concealed carry permits to prove they had “proper cause” to bear a weapon for self-defense purposes.

With that law invalidated, New York applicants can get a permit without proving a specific self-defense need as long as there’s no other disqualifying reason, such as a past felony conviction.

David, a firearm consultant who helps New York gun permit seekers with the process, said the application explosion comes as he has noticed an increasing number of clients wishing to get a weapon because they’re scared. While major crimes in the city have dipped in recent years, they still remain above pre-pandemic levels.

“Definitely the most popular reason is they just don’t feel as safe as they used to, with the protests, riots, crime,” David, who spoke on condition that his last name not be used, told The News, referring to recent demonstrations against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

The new police data reviewed by The News shows the NYPD received 13,369 gun permit applications in 2023. That marked a significant jump from 2022, when the department received 7,407 applications, and 2021, when it took in 4,665, according to the data.

From Jan. 1 through March 3, the most recent span for which data is available, the department received 3,358 applications, making the total number of permit claims submitted since Jan. 1, 2023 at least 16,727. If the application clip through March 3 continues, the department will see roughly the same spiked number of permit claims in 2024 as it did in 2023.

Gerald Esposito, owner of Esposito’s Custom Guns in Queens, said he sees the increase in permit seekers as an overall good thing, but worried New York’s current weapons training requirements for applicants are too lax.

“It’s 16 hours in the classroom and two hours on the range. I took the class and it’s a very basic class. I would not let someone hold a gun next to me who was in that class. I was scared with some of the people in the class. One mistake could be a very bad mistake,” said Esposito, whose shop mostly caters to patrons who need customized weapons for target shooting competitions. “The training needs to be beefed up or reinforced … I would love everyone to have the right to carry a gun, but I want to be safe too.”

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