‘Yuge’ March for estimated gun sales

By Christen Smith

Estimated gun sales eclipsed historic highs in March, according to federal data.
Applications submitted to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System exceeded 2.7 million last month — the busiest March on record and the third highest ranking month since the FBI began keeping track in 1998.
Estimated gun sales — the sum total of transfers in the NICS’s handgun, long gun, multiple and other categories — totaled 1.4 million, an 11 percent spike over last year and 16 percent above 2016, the busiest year ever for background checks.
Dealers processed more than 781,000 applications for handguns and just under 541,000 applications for long guns last month — the most ever recorded for March.
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.
The sharp uptick follows six weeks of intense public debate about the role of stricter gun regulations in preventing mass shootings after a 19-year-old

Source: Guns.com