Amid all the furious debate generated by gun tragedies like the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida, citizens in too many states have been quietly, legally arming themselves at alarming rates that offer scant optimism for reining in the nation’s runaway gun culture.

Florida granted more than 173,000 new concealed-carry gun permits in the past year, even as the Trayvon Martin case proceeded — a 17 percent increase that is double the rate of five years ago and brought the total of gun-ready citizens in Florida to more than one million.

The trend was no less pronounced in a dozen other states that together issued more than a half-million permits in 2012 in a civilian armaments boom that shows little sign of abating, according to a survey in The Wall Street Journal. And while six states enacted tighter gun safety laws after the massacre of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., politicians in 20 other states were successfully prodded by the gun lobby into loosening their concealed-carry laws, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Illinois, the last of the 50 states to ban concealed carry, ended its holdout this month after a Second Amendment court challenge. In an alarming turnabout, the Legislature enacted a law that sets no limit on the number of guns or ammunition anyone with a permit can carry. It also allows patrons to tote their weapons to restaurants where liquor sales make up no more than 50 percent of the establishment’s gross revenue (such are the nuances of supposedly safety-minded lawmakers).