Reviewing gun sales, checks in January 2017

By Christen Smith

It’s a new year and with it comes a new attitude industry-wide as the “greatest gun salesman of all time” hands over the keys to the White House, closing the door on eight years of failed gun control policy.
While pro-gun legislation made waves on Capitol Hill all month long, background checks fluctuated independently of current events, according to federal data.
The first day of session coincided with the busiest day — and week — all month long for background checks processed through the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
NICS checks serve as a proxy for gun sales, though determining how many checks correlate to one gun sold remains an imperfect science.
The system processed 81,220 checks alone on Jan. 3, a Tuesday — typically a slower day for gun sales. A Guns.com analysis of daily NICS checks reveals a pattern of applications plummeting on Sundays and rebounding over the course of the work week, peaking on Fridays.
A possible correlation between current events and the ebb and flow of background checks, however, doesn’t manifest in the data until the following weekend, if it all.
Overall, NICS processed a little more than 2 million background checks in January, averaging almost 66,000 applications daily —

Source: Guns.com