The FBI recorded almost 170,000 background checks related to firearm purchases on Black Friday this year, with more than 600,000 recorded in the week leading up to that Friday, the Washington Examiner reports.
The industry trade group that tracks firearms sales numbers, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), announced on Monday that the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) conducted 169,906 background checks on firearms sales on Black Friday for a total of 613,380 checks in the last week of November. That figure represents a 9.8 percentage point decrease from the year before when the FBI recorded 680,671 background checks during that same period.
"The background checks reported by the FBI are in keeping with the trends NSSF has seen throughout the year. While the overall trends are still coming off the peaks experienced in recent years, firearm sales remain consistently strong, with over a million per month for more than five years running," Joe Bartozzi, NSSF president and CEO, said in a statement.
"These figures tell us that there is a continued strong appetite for lawful firearm ownership by law-abiding Americans and that firearm manufacturers across the country continue to deliver the quality firearms our customers have come to expect," Bartozzi added.
"This was our best Black Friday sale since COVID. Full stop," Justin Anderson of North Carolina's Hyatt Guns, one of the largest gun stores in the country, told the Examiner's Washington Secrets.
"Sales online and in our retail stores were excellent and, frankly, a bit surprising. While we expected numbers to stay somewhat strong, given the strong economic outlook, our experience told us that gun-friendly leadership in Washington usually leads to a dip in sales. That was far from the case this year, and we're glad to see it," he added.