As contentious as the 2024 elections have been, they haven't led to a huge surge in gun sales. The National Shooting Sports Foundation reports that there were 1,302,857 background checks conducted on firearm transfers last month; about 200,000 more than what was reported in September, but a decrease of 5% compared to the 1,370,719 checks that took place in October 2023.
Mark Oliva, NSSF's managing director for public affairs, says the figures are a sign that lawful gun ownership continues to be an important factor in the elections, noting that October marks the 63rd straight month of over 1 million background checks.
Law-abiding Americans – by the tens of millions – are quite literally voting with their wallets and investing in their rights. These figures tell elected officials where America stands on support for the Second Amendment.”
With more than 1.3 million background checks performed last month, it would be unfair to call October's figures a sign of a slump. But it's also the first time in four months that the 2024 figure was lower comparing year-to-year. As The Reload reported in early October:
The third quarter numbers represent a marked turnaround from the sales slump the market experienced earlier in the year. While guns have not broken through as a top issue in the 2024 presidential election, the two candidates diverge significantly on how to handle gun policy–with the Democratic ticket making a sales ban on popular guns like the AR-15 a top priority. The threat of new national gun restrictions, especially during election years like 2016 and 2020, has traditionally driven spikes in gun sales and could explain the recent uptick as well.
That’s certainly what the NSSF sees at play in the numbers, even pointing to the recent exchange on gun policy at this week’s Vice Presidential Debate.
“The vice presidential debate offered a substantive examination of why Americans – by the millions each month – continue to lawfully purchase firearms,” Mark Oliva, a spokesman for the trade group, said in a statement. “The fact is, Americans face a stark difference in the two tickets when it comes to respecting their Constitutional rights to keep and bear arms.”
Still, the growth in sales checks was modest. September 2024 was only the fourth-best September on record, down nearly 30 percent from the all-time record set in 2020. But it was also on par with records set in the pre-pandemic era and well ahead of the pre-pandemic norm.
That's largely true for last month's figures as well. October 2024 was the fifth-best October on record, but still far above the pre-pandemic numbers reported in 2017, 2018, and 2019. Interestingly, though, October 2024 was slightly under the figures reported in October 2016.
2020's numbers were an historic outlier, coming in the midst of a huge surge in gun sales that began with the COVID shutdowns and continued on for well over a year. 2016 and 2024 are both closer to "normal" presidential election years, so what does it mean that last month's background checks on gun transfers were slightly below what they were in 2016?
Not much, to be honest. While it's generally a better idea to compare year-to-year figures rather than month-to-month, when you look at the numbers for September-October 2016 and September-October 2024, the trend is almost identical. Eight years ago transfers increased from roughly 1,180,000 in September to 1,350,000 in October. This year, we went from 1,156,223 in September to 1,302,857 in October.
Part of that can be attributed to the approach of hunting season, which typically leads to increased gun sales in October, November, and December regardless of whether there are elections taking place. But it's also reasonable to believe that the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency also spurred some gun sales in October of 2016, just as the prospect of a Kamala Harris presidency this year has led some folks to vote with their wallets in addition to using their ballot.
If Kamala Harris is declared the winner of this year's election, we can expect a much bigger spike in sales in November. In 2012, when Barack Obama won a second term, month-to-month sales soared between October and November; about 1.15 million sales in October 2012 to more than 1.5 million the following month.
Harris has been downplaying her support for gun control on the campaign trail, but if she wins the White House that would soon change. And if Democrats keep control of the Senate and take back the House (an unlikely possibility, but not out of the question), I expect we'll see a significant spike in sales over the next few weeks. Here's hoping that doesn't happen, and the firearms industry has a normal holiday shopping season instead of a run on guns ahead of an "assault weapons" ban and other restrictions on our right to keep and bear arms.
