NICS in May, 2020, President Trump as Greatest Gun Salesman, ever?

The National Instant background Check System (NICS) numbers have been released for May, 2020. As expected, they are breaking records.

They are, at 3,066,740, the second largest single month for NICS checks, ever, only exceeded by December, 2015.

The continuing, growing number of NICS checks for carry permits and carry permit rechecks, renders the total number of NICS less and less related to the total number of firearms sold.

The FBI allows access to a breakdown of what the checks are done for, by type of firearm purchased. By adding those numbers, we can obtain a good approximation of the total number of firearms sold. The formula used is checks done for Handguns + Long guns + Other + (2.5 times the number done for multiple firearms on one check) = total firearms sold.

In May, 2020, that was the highest number of firearms sold in the month of May ever recorded, about 1,580,341 firearms.

The total sold so far in 2020, according to the formula, has been right at eight million, within a reasonable margin of error. (7,978,582 is 99.97% of eight million).

Compare eight million firearms sold in the first five months of 2020, with the first and second record years of firearms added to the private stock in 2013 and 2016.

Firearms sold are not exactly the same as firearms added to the private stock, but the numbers  are close.

In 2013, the total added for the year was 16 million and thirty thousand.

In 2016, the total added for the year was 16 million and 260 thousand.

We are far from half way through 2020. If we continue firearm sales at this pace, the total added to the private stock for 2020 could break all records at more than 18 million.

President Donald Trump may rival President Barack Obama for the title of the greatest firearm salesman of all time!

The uncertainty, discord, and civil unrest unleashed against the nation, in an attempt to unseat President Trump, far outpaces the unrest during President Barack Obama's term. From 2008 to 2016, it was threats of gun bans, ammunition bans, with a few riots thrown in.

From 2017 to present, it has been the administrative coup against President Trump, the threat of gun bans by Democrats, actual state gun bans where Democrats control the state, such as in New York, California, Maryland, and New Jersey; and the fear of social unrest during the Covid 19 imbroglio and the rioting ginned up by leftists under the cover of the George Floyd protests promoted by the Media.

In both administrations the inaction of the Supreme Court to protect the Second Amendment, after 2012, has fueled the buying spree.

The civil unrest, violent mobs burning public buildings and private property, and pictures of armed property owners preventing rioters from looting their property, all overshadow claims by those who wish Americans disarmed.

The campaign to disarm the American people is dead in the water for the foreseeable future.  Two contradictory premises about the nature of reality, promoted by the left, have collided with and destroyed each other.

The destruction of contradictory dogma is illustrated thus:

Posited: No one needs a gun, you can rely on the police.

Posited:  You cannot trust the police because they are corrupt racists.

+ scenes of retreating police and burning buildings

= I need a gun and I am glad we have the Second Amendment.

It was the ramp up of firearms producers to meet the demand during the Obama regime which created the infrastructure to produce those eight million firearms sold in the first five months of 2020.

That productive capacity would not have been there, except for the enormous demand created by the push for gun bans during President Obama's tenure.

President Trump may take the crown as the greatest firearm salesman, ever.

His achievement is built on the structure created in response to the Obama regime.


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

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