Record Sales Show Americans Are Voting For Guns With Their Wallets

There’s no denying it: Americans still value gun ownership.

The total number of firearm background checks conducted on Nov. 29, 2019, was 202,465. That is the second-highest single day for the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) in history, dating back to 1998 when NICS was implemented. It also represents an 11 percent increase over last year’s Black Friday total.

The high-water mark occurred in 2017, with 203,086 checks. This year’s total was just 622 shy of that record. Checks for the entire month of November 2019 totaled 1,342,155, a 2.1 percent increase over November 2018.

This continues this year’s trend of near-record monthly background checks for retail firearms sales. The FBI reports NICS figures monthly, and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry’s trade association, adjusts those figures to remove checks not associated with transferring a firearm to provide a more accurate proxy for firearms sales. NSSF-adjusted NICS data has shown an increase year over year for the past three months.