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| Courtesy Dean Weingarten. NICS by Category. Bars are 2020, lines are 2019 |
July 2020 was another record breaking month for both National Instant background Check System (NICS) checks and gun sales. The total number of checks was 3,639,224, a record number of checks for the month, and the third highest month ever. Both of the higher months (March and June) are in 2020.
As noted before, more and more NICS checks are being done for carry permits and carry permit rechecks. There were nearly as many NICS checks done for permits in July of 2020 as there were for gun sales, which is to say, about half of NICS checks are not for the sale of guns.
Fortunately, the FBI tells us what checks were actually done for gun sales. It is not absolute, as there can be multiple guns sold on one check. In about half of the states, people with permits to carry can buy guns using the check which was done for their permit. They are not counted as another check, because their sale is not recorded in the instant check system as a sale.
The formula for the approximate number of gun sales is handgun checks + Long guns checks + Other guns checks + 2.5 x multiple sales on 1 check = 1.84 million gun sales in July, 2020.
That is the all time record number of sales for July, by a large amount. The next highest month was in July of 2016, of 1.22 million.
July is traditionally the lowest month for gun sales. This year it is among the highest. Last month, June 2020, had more. July was down a bit from June's 2.13 million guns sold. The total is about 11.84 million guns sold so far this year.
We are headed for an all time record of over 20 million guns in 2020, the greatest number of guns ever sold in one year.
NSSF estimates 40 percent of those gun sales are to new gun owners. That is eight million new gun owners added this year. Some proportion of those new gun owners are going to vote for their Second Amendment rights. We do not know if it will be half a million who evaluate the election based on their new found sense of personal security, or six million.
The number may decide whether the Republic continues and the Constitution is honored; or whether we continue to slide toward authoritarian socialism, also known as the newly exposed fascist left.
Here are the numbers for the last five July gun sales:
July 2016 1,220,710 Presidential election year (Donald Trump gets elected)
July 2017 916,586
July 2018 849,837 Congressional elections. Republicans lose the House
July 2019 853,963
July 2020 1,842,550 Presidential election year
The reasons for the record high sales are fairly clear.
- Violent riots in many cities.
- The Democrats running on defunding the police.
- Democrats making infringing on gun sales and ownership part of their platform.
- Murder rates up in many Democrat run cities.
- High levels of gun manufacturing base, created during the Obama administration.
The question is, how long will this last?
Probably past the election. If President Trump is reelected, his opponents will redouble their efforts to get him out of office by any means.
If President Trump loses, Conservatives and Second Amendment supporters will fear the worst tyranny the country has seen since Reconstruction.
The traditional solution for these sort of differences is for the parties to wait for the next election. In this case, the Democrats never accepted the results of the last election, violating previous precedent. Now, the Conservatives are concerned about the Democrats playing fairly, as they have demonstrated their unwillingness to play by Constitutional rules.
Unrest is likely until one side wins and keeps the Presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress, then either restores the rule of law and the Constitution; or packs the Supreme Court and changes the rules to prevent another Trump from ever being elected again.
©2020 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
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