NICS Background Checks up for January, New Format

By Dean Weingarten

U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- January 2020 had the fourth-highest number of National Instant background Check System (NICS) background checks ever for a month, not just for January.

The number of total checks was 2,702,707. Only March of 2018 (2,767,699), December of 2016 (2,771,159), and December of 2019 (2,936,894) had more checks in a month, in over 20 years of NICS.

High numbers in December are to be expected. It is most commonly the month with the highest NICS checks in a year.

What is being seen is not an ever-expanding number of gun sales, but an ever-expanding number of NICS checks for other purposes, especially for carry permits and carry permit rechecks. Of the number of NICS checks for January 2020, 1,490,785, well over half, were for carry permits and permit rechecks.

Over 900,000 of those were re-checks for Illinois and Kentucky. Permit checks for those two states were 17,551 for Illinois and 2,341 for Kentucky.

The Illinois and Kentucky permit recheck numbers make comparisons of total NICS checks to gun sales unreasonable.

Fortunately, the FBI reports NICS Checks by state and type. Instead of looking at total NICS, the monthly report will now be on NICS for firearm sales.

Those sales …Read the Rest

Source:: AmmoLand