2017 Second Busiest Gun Buying Year On Record

By Tom Knighton

Earlier this year, there was a lot of talk of a Trump Slump, a drop in gun sales because there’s no longer a fear of more gun control. Those concerns have been thoroughly debunked over the course of the year, but the perception still persists in some circles.

Well, maybe the fact that 2017 was the second-best year for gun sales will finally kill it.

2017 saw the second-most gun-related FBI background checks on record, a report released on Wednesday showed.

The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) conducted 25,235,215 checks last year. That’s nearly 2.3 million checks fewer than the record-breaking year of 2016 but also nearly 2.1 million checks more than 2015, the third-best year on record.

The number of checks conducted by NICS is generally considered a leading indicator of how many gun sales have been processed in a given period of time in large part because nearly all sales—including all new gun sales—made through a federally licensed dealer must include a background check. It is not, however, a perfect representation of raw gun sales for a number of reasons. Sales between private parties on the used market are not required to go …Read the Rest

Source:: Bearing Arms