Number of People Buying Guns for Black Friday Nearly Broke Background-Check Record

Image: Gun photo courtesy of Smith & Wesson; photo of bow by monicor, courtesy of Pixabay; image composite and manipulation by America’s 1^st Freedom

Near-record-breaking numbers of FBI background checks indicated high gun sales for “Black Friday,” which is often considered the biggest shopping day of the year.

“We saw good numbers and good traffic throughout the week,” Mark Abramson, a New Mexico gun store owner, told America’s 1^st Freedom. “People are starting to think about safety again and what’s really going on.”

According to the FBI’s National Instant Background Check System (NICS), Nov. 29 saw 202,465 background checks, an 11% increase over Black Friday 2018. The only Black Friday higher than 2019 in NICS was for 2017, with 203,086 background checks. As several news outlets have reported, the number of Black Friday background checks exceeds the number of U.S. Marines, of which there are 182,000.

The NICS numbers do not directly correlate to gun purchases. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) regularly adjusts the NICS numbers to reflect actual purchases more accurately, by removing known checks and re-checks related to concealed carry licenses. So, while the NICS numbers reflect more than 2.5 million background checks in November, the NSSF estimates actual gun sales for the month were closer to 1.3 million.

This year’s Black Friday week ranks as the ninth-highest week of background checks, according to the NICS data.