U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- The National Instant background Checks System (NICS) numbers are in for August of 2020. As expected, they are another record. Every month so far in 2020 has been a record month for NICS.
August is a record both for the background checks and for firearm sales. In August, gun sales were a bit less than 54% of the total NICS numbers. The total NICS checks were 3,115,063, but many of those are for permits and permit rechecks.
According to our formula of handgun sales + long gun sales + other gun sales + 2.5 x multiple guns on one NICS check sales, there were 1,669,115 gun sales on the NICS system in August of 2020.
That number is the highest number of gun sales in any August on record in NICS. It brings the total of gun sales in the NICS system in 2020 to over 13.5 million firearms sold in the first eight months of 2020. The sales are trending to reach 21 million sales by the end of the year, a record far surpassing the 16.26 million guns added to the private stock in 2016, the previous record.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) has estimated that 40% of the sales in 2020 are to new gun owners. That translates into more than five million new gun owners so far, and more than eight million new gun owners by the rest of the year.
We can only produce and sell this level of firearms because of the run-up in gun manufacturing and ammunition manufacturing which occurred under President Barack Obama.
He was the greatest gun salesman, ever – until the present.
According to my calculations, 97.206 million guns were sold from 2009 through 2016, inclusive.
If the trend continues through the end of President Trump’s first term, there will have been about 60 million firearms added to the private stock in four years.
No one knows with precision exactly how many gun owners exist in the United States. Many gunowners are reluctant to tell people conducting surveys whether they own firearms or not. There is no overall list of firearms owners or registration of firearms in the United States.
With about a hundred million gun owners previously estimated in the United States, an increase of eight percent is significant.
The number of privately owned firearms in the United States is now over 456 million, according to my calculations, based on the method pioneered by Newton and Zimring. Firearms manufactured before 1899 are not included.
Gary Kleck expanded on those numbers, using the same methodology, in his award winning book “Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America”. Point Blank received the Michael J. Hindelang Award in 1993. I extended the method to bring the numbers up to date.
Will all the new gun owners vote for President Trump, because he is campaigning in favor of people exercising their Second Amendment rights, while his opponents have committed to the most anti-Second Amendment rights platform in history?
No one knows.
A great many gun owners have been complacent. In 2020, with the numerous riots, the push to defund the police, the attempt to delegitimize the police, and the Supreme Court refusing to hear Second Amendment cases, it is harder to ignore the utility of firearms ownership and the threats to the Republic.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
I have been in this gun game for a long time and have a hard time sympathizing with those either not smart enough or too ignorant to have what they need. This did not happen overnight.
California is burning up, but not because of the straight people.
More 2A Supporters. And more Trump and Down-ballot GOP voters.
Many Americans across the country are afraid of what may happen in the near future with all the rioting, looting, and burning of the cities and the talk of defunding the police, people are scared for their own safety. If the democrats win the White House and the crazy liberals takeover the government, will all hell breakout, that could be the driving force for the new firearm owners rushing to buying their first weapon. The liberal media has done everything they can to scare America about the Trump administration and push for old crazy Joe to be in the drivers… Read more »
“There is no overall list of firearms owners or registration of firearms in the United States.” That we know off. I’m sure somewhere someone is illegally keeping a list that we don’t know of.
When Yamamoto, the man who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, was asked why he didn’t invade the contental U.S. he replied; There would be a gun behind every blade of grass. America has been armed since birth. One of the reasons for the birth of America was literally gun control. That is something that should give pause to anyone, any nation thinking about doing America harm. The demoncrapic socialist party is not trying to disarm America for the good of Americans, they are trying to destroy America. That is tyranny and that is treason. Jefferson once said the tree… Read more »