NICS Numbers Fall, But Also Rise

The FBI’s National Instant Background Check System ticked past the 2.5 million mark for last month, June 2022, which sounds like a lot because it is a lot. However, those numbers are down a little from June 2021 (3 million) and a lot from June 2020 (3.9 million) which would point to gun sales cooling significantly over the past two years.

 On the other hand, the National Shooting Sports Foundation looked at all those figures and, skimming off the data for everything but gun sales– some states use NICS for background checks on gun permits for instance– they were able to figure out that likely firearm sales for last month were actually up 8 percent from last year.

The group also pointed out that June 2022 marked the 35th consecutive month in which over 1 million firearms were sold in the country, which is a record.