Another Record of NICS Checks and Gun Sales for August 2020

The National Instant background Checks System (NICS) numbers are in for August of 2020. As expected, they are another record. Every month so far in 2020 has been a record month for NICS.

August is a record both for the background checks and for firearm sales. In August, gun sales were a bit less than 54% of the total NICS numbers. The total NICS checks were 3,115,063, but many of those are for permits and permit rechecks. 

According to our formula of handgun sales + long gun sales + other gun sales + 2.5 x multiple guns on one NICS check sales, there were 1,669,115 gun sales on the NICS system in August of 2020. 

That number is the highest number of gun sales in any August on record in NICS. It brings the total of gun sales in the NICS system in 2020 to over 13.5 million firearms sold in the first eight months of 2020.  The sales are trending to reach 21 million sales by the end of the year, a record far surpassing the 16.26 million guns added to the private stock in 2016, the previous record. 

The National Shooting Sports Foundation  (NSSF) has estimated that 40% of the sales in 2020 are to new gun owners. That translates into more than five million new gun owners so far, and more than eight million new gun owners by the rest of the year.   

https://www.nssf.org/

We can only produce and sell this level of firearms because of the run-up in gun manufacturing and ammunition manufacturing which occurred under President Barack Obama.

He was the greatest gun salesman, ever - until the present.
According to my calculations, 97.206 million guns were sold from 2009 through 2016, inclusive.

It the trend continues through the end of President Trump's first term, there will have been about 60 million firearms added to the private stock in four years. With about a hundred million gun owners previously in the United States, an increase of eight percent is significant.

No one knows with precision exactly how many gun owners exist in the United States. Many gunowners are reluctant to tell people conducting surveys whether they own firearms or not. There is no overall list of firearms owners or registration of firearms in the United States. 

The number of privately owned firearms in the United States is now over 456 million, according to my calculations, based on the method pioneered by Newton and Zimring. Firearms manufactured before 1899 are not included.

Gary Kleck expanded on those numbers, using the same methodology in his award winning book "Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America". Point Blank received the Michael J. Hindelang Award in 1993.

Will all the new gun owners vote for President Trump, because he is campaigning in favor of people exercising their Second Amendment rights, while his opponents have committed to the most anti-Second Amendment rights platform in history? 

No one knows.

A great many gun owners have been complacent. In 2020, with the numerous riots, the push to defund the police, the attempt to delegitimize the police, and the Supreme Court refusing to hear Second Amendment cases, it is harder to ignore the utility of firearms ownership and the threats to the Republic. 

©2020 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

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