Gun sales have been over a million per month for...well, a really long time. People are buying guns and buying tons of them.
While the media has made a big deal over certain left-favoring groups suddenly buying firearms for the first time, though, it seems that firearm sales in December weren't particularly strong, at least when compared to the year before.
This is according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry group that makes estimates of gun sales based on NICS checks.
NSSF®, The Firearm Industry Trade Association, released the final figures for NSSF-adjusted FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) verifications for December 2024 and the 2024-year-end totals. December’s totals topped 1.6 million background checks for the sale of a firearm at retail. That brought the 2024 annual total to over 15.2 million background checks for the sale of firearms at retail.
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The December 2024 NSSF-adjusted NICS figure of 1,642,270 is a decrease of 7.5 percent compared to December 2023 NSSF-adjusted NICS figure of 1,775,834. For comparison, the unadjusted December 2024 FBI NICS figure of 2,647,933 reflects a 1.6 percent decrease from the unadjusted FBI NICS figure of 2,690,231 in December 2023. December 2024 marks the 65th month in a row that has exceeded 1 million adjusted background checks in a single month.
The fourth quarter 2024 NSSF-adjusted NICS figure of 4,459,900 reflects a decrease of 5.9 percent compared to the 4,742,029 figure for fourth quarter 2023.
The annual 2024 NSSF-adjusted NICS figure of 15,239,011 reflects a decrease of 3.5 percent compared to the 15,848,055 figure for annual 2023.
Now, there are some caveats we need to consider that might skew the numbers just a bit.
Please note: Twenty-four states currently have at least one qualified alternative permit, which under the Brady Act allows the permit-holder, who has undergone a background check to obtain the permit, to purchase a firearm from a licensed dealer without a separate additional background check for that transfer. The number of NICS checks in these states does not include these legal transfers based on qualifying permits and NSSF does not adjust for these transfers.
The adjusted NICS data were derived by subtracting out NICS purpose code permit checks and permit rechecks used by states for CCW permit application checks as well as checks on active CCW permit databases. NSSF started subtracting permit rechecks in February 2016.
With that said, why? Why were gun sales down, not just for December but for 2024 as a whole when compared to 2023?
Of course, this is going to just be speculation, but I think part of it was because the writing was on the wall that Democrats weren't really going to win in the 2024 election.
The one thing about guns that Democrats are great at is selling them. The threat of a gun ban looming tends to get a lot of people into gun stores and buying firearms, particularly those that are most likely to be banned.
From the moment of the first debate between Trump and Biden, it was clear where things were going. Kamala Harris taking over didn't help all that much, especially as the media bent over backward to such a degree that even your ordinary voters couldn't help but see it. Democrats alienated pretty much everyone who wasn't in their camp and the voters saw it.
What that meant, though, was that a lot of people just didn't see the threat of gun control as being all that real for the first time in a few years.
That means there just won't be as many gun sales.
Eight years ago, this marked a period a lot of people called the "Trump Slump." Gun manufacturers overproduced expecting a Hillary win and when that didn't happen, they had a bunch of inventory and far less demand than they expected, reportedly. The lack of sales were pretty obvious, though, and that's likely what we're seeing again.
Oddly, it's a comforting sign, because it means the American people aren't expecting new gun laws anytime toon.