March was the busiest month ever for background checks in Vermont

By Christen Smith

Rifles on display at Parro’s Gun Shop in Waterbury. (Photo: Jim Welch/VTDigger)
Background checks in Vermont surged to an all-time high last month as the state Legislature mulled a package of gun reforms in the wake of the Parkland shooting.
Dealers processed 6,177 applications through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in March — more than the total number of checks in January and February combined and up more than 50 percent over 2017.
NICS checks serve as a proxy measure for gun sales, albeit an imperfect one. Applications for concealed carry permits, periodic rechecks for maintaining licenses and a slew of smaller categories for pawns, redemptions, rentals and other rare situations undercut the total amount of checks processed in one month. Guns.com removes these categories from the total figure to more accurately assess actual transfers, though it’s still an estimate.
There’s a well-documented correlation between high-profile mass shootings and increased gun sales — most notably a 61 percent nationwide spike witnessed in the days after the Sandy Hook massacre in December 2012.  The second half of the month accounted for eight of the biggest days for background checks that year. Four of them made the FBI’s top 10 busiest days ever list and the

Source: Guns.com