Free Republic

The National Instant background Check System (NICS) numbers for October, 2022, are the third highest on record. The gun sales recorded by NICS for October, 2022 are the fourth highest on record. This shows the trend of gun sales is softening a bit. Suppose potential gun buyers perceive greater stability in national and international affairs. In that case, if potential gun purchasers perceive the threat of gun restrictions to have decreased because of the election and Supreme Court and lower court restrictions, sales will likely decrease.The number of NICS checks in October 2022 was down by 6 percent from October...

Samuel Stebbins writes for 24/7 Wall St and several other left-leaning organizations such as the NYTs, HuffPost, and MSN. Mr. Stebbins has written a number of articles involving guns, crime, and statistics. The numbers he cites are usually correct. They are from sources such as the FBI Uniform Crime Reports.Unfortunately, it is easy to make errors if you do not understand how the numbers are generated. It appears to be the reason for the laughable numbers in Samuel’s most recent article claiming “Gun Sales are Collapsing in Illinois.” In Illinois, gun sales are falling even faster than they are nationwide....

The numbers for the National Instant Background Checks (NICS) and approximate gun sales are in for August of 2022. The month is the third highest on record for both NICS checks and gun sales. This has been a trend in 2022. NICS Checks are reported as 2.45 million, while gun sales are approximately 1.24 million. This is 96 percent of what gun sales were in August of 2021 (1.29 million).The most gun sales in August occurred in 2020, with 1.67 million. The fourth highest was in 2016, with 1.17 million.Lines are from 2021; Bars are from 2022 Several million new...

Gun sales and National Instant background Check System checks fell slightly in July 2022. The Supreme Court decision in the NYSR&PA v Bruen case robustly protected Second Amendment rights. As expected, gun sales dropped slightly in July 2022. The gun sales in July were about 1.19 million, about a five percent drop from the 1.25 million in July of 2021 and 2.7% lower than July of 2016, making 2022 the fourth highest July for gun sales on record. NICS checks total were at 2.4 million, the third highest July on record. That is a 17% drop from NICS checks in...

As part of the wave of gun legislation reforms sweeping the country since the 1980s, the Kentucky legislature required forfeited guns to be sold at auction to Federal Firearms License holders. The legislation was created in Kentucky in 1998. Guns that were stolen, and can be identified, are returned to their legal owners. This was to prevent the destruction of valuable assets for no purpose. In addition, the sale of the assets would accrue to the benefit of the police, which gained support for the legislation.The Kentucky State Police have been tasked by the Kentucky General Assembly to administer the...

The National Instant background Check System (NICS) checks continued the trend of being the third-highest June on record, while gun sales jumped to the second-highest June on record. The drop in NICS checks by almost 500,000 from last June occurred primarily because of the reform of the Firearms Owner IDentification card system in Illinois. Illinois checks and rechecks for permits dropped by over 400 thousand.At the same time, gun sales (always an approximation because of the way the NICS system operates) were up by about 8% to 1.35 million. It is far from the record for June set in 2020...

May of 2022 continues the trend for 2022 to be the third-highest year for firearm sales. The month is the fourth-highest for NICS checks on record. The record year was 2020. The second-highest year was 2021. 2022 is headed to be the third-highest year on record for firearm sales. The fourth highest year for firearm sales was 2016. The third highest year for May NICS checks was 2019. May of 2022 was the fourth-highest for total NICS checks.Handgun sales continue as 58% of all gun sales. Long gun sales are 32% of the total sales; with multiple sales of guns...

The National Instant background Check System (NICS) numbers and gun sales for April of 2022 are in. They reveal a consistent trend of gun sales which are the third-highest for the month on record. In April about 1.31 million more private firearms were added to the private stock in the United States. The previous records for April were in 2021 with 1.67 million sold; 2020, with 1.65 million sold, and in third place, 2016 with 1.07 million sold.Lines are for 2021 numbers, bars are for 2022 2022 is now in the third-place position. It appears there is a “new normal”...

March 2022 firearm sales and National Instant background Check System (NICS) checks done by the FBI are both the third-highest on record. The NICS system started record-keeping in 1998. There are 24 years of data for March. The 2022 firearm sales and NICS checks are starting to show a trend of the third-highest after 2020 and 2021. In March of 2022, firearm sales were about 1.62 million. In March 2020 they were 2.37 million. In March 2021, they were about 2.0 million. The next highest March was in 2013, with about 1.47 million firearm sales.The NICS checks for March 2022...

February of 2022 was the third highest February for gun sales since the National Instant background Check System (NICS) started in 1998. It was the fourth-highest number of NICS checks done during the month of February. Only 46 percent of the National Instant background Check System checks were for carry permits and carry permit rechecks in February of 2022. In February of 2021, the carry permits and permit rechecks were about 60 percent of total NICS checks.Lines are from 2021. Bars are in 2022. The change seems related to the implementation of a reformed FOID card system in Illinois. Public...

The January 2022 National Instant background Check System checks report is out and gun sales have dropped significantly from those in January 2021. In January 2021, the NICS checks were over 4.3 million. In January 2022, they were over 2.0 million. Gun sales fell from over two million in January of 2021 to over 1.15 million in 2022. In the historical context of NICS numbers, these are still high. January NICS checks did not break 1 million until after the election of President Barack Obama in November of 2008. January 2009 NICS checks were over 1.2 million.On a quick survey...

Gun violence has become a regular part of the news headlines this year. Murders in American cities spiked last year, particularly in large cities. Guns were involved in most of these. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there already have been 4,706 gun deaths across the country so far in 2022. Even with more strict gun ownership and purchasing laws, the difficult fact is that about 400 million guns are currently owned by private citizens, the police and the military. The chance that civilians who own guns will turn them into the government, no matter what the incentive, is small....

2021 has become the second-highest year for firearm sales after the record set in 2020 In November of 2021, there were about 1.51 million firearm sales conducted through the National Instant background Check System (NICS) and 2.69 million NICS checks. November of 2021 was the third-highest November for gun sales and total NICS background checks since NICS was started in 1998.There were about .758 million checks for handguns, .629 million checks for long guns, almost 55 thousand checks for “other” which might be handguns, long guns, or simple firearms, and often applies to receivers which have not yet been assembled...

In the continuing trend for gun sales measured by the National Instant background Check System, (NICS), September 2020 was the second-highest in the history of NICS, coming in behind last years record number of about 1.61 million. September of 2021 had about 1.31 million gun sales recorded. In 2019 the gun sales were less than a million, about 974 thousand guns were sold in September.The number of gun sales traditionally picks up in September as hunting seasons are opening and approaching. This probably accounts for the converging numbers of handgun and long gun sales.Handgun sales were about 681 thousand, long...

First, last month still saw sales of some 2.2 million units in total, exceeding every year prior to 2020. Moreover, for the first three quarters of 2021, firearms sales reached nearly 30.5 million – compared to 28.6 million for the same period a year earlier. Clearly, that was the result of the pandemic, followed by a wave of violent protests across the country that occurred following the killing of George Floyd over Memorial Day weekend 2020. It is true as well that last year’s fourth-quarter sales were strong, driven in no small part to the election of President Joe Biden,...

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- In August of 2021, National Instant Background Check System (NICS) and the associated gun sales are at high levels, but not as high as the record sales in 2020. The August sales of 2021 are the second-highest on record, as were the July sales in 2021.This may indicate a new normal of consistently high gun sales, below the record-setting levels of 2020.There were about 1.29 million gun sales recorded by NICS this past August. In 2020, gun sales were about 1.67 million. The next highest August was in 2016, with about 1.17 million gun sales.These consistently high gun...

Firearms makers big and small have reported increased sales, and last month Springfield, Mass.-based Smith & Wesson reported that its sales more than doubled in its last fiscal year to $1.1 billion. The company’s sales certainly remained strong into July, when the company claimed the top spots on Guns.com top firearms sales charts for the month with its M&P 15 Sport II Optics Ready, an AR-style modern sporting rifle that the company noted was engineered for a wide variety of recreational, sport shooting and even professional applications.

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- July 2021 was the second-highest total July for National Instant background Check System (NICS) checks on record. The highest was in July of 2020. The number of checks done in July of 2021 was 2,860,476. The number in July of 2020 was 3,639,224.July 2021 was also the second-highest July for gun sales on record, with the highest having been last year, July of 2020, as well. The July 2021 gun sales were 1.84 million. The calculation of the number is approximate, consisting of handgun checks + Long guns checks + Other guns checks + 2.5 x multiple sales...

SEATTLE (AP) — The COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with record sales of firearms, has fueled a shortage of ammunition in the United States that’s impacting law enforcement agencies, people seeking personal protection, recreational shooters and hunters -- and could deny new gun owners the practice they need to handle their weapons safely. Manufacturers say they’re producing as much ammunition as they can, but many gun store shelves are empty and prices keep rising. Ammunition imports are way up, but at least one U.S. manufacturer is exporting ammo. All while the pandemic, social unrest and a rise in violent crime have prompted...

WASHINGTON — A U.S. appeals court ruled Tuesday that the federal law banning handgun sales by licensed dealers to anyone under 21 is unconstitutional.A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, based in Richmond, Virginia, voted 2-1 to declare the law invalid. "Our nation's most cherished constitutional rights vest no later than 18. And the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms is no different," the majority opinion said.The ruling, sure to be appealed, was a victory for a Virginia woman, Natalia Marshall. She wanted to buy a handgun to protect herself from her abusive...