Black Friday is the biggest sales day of the year, even now in the era of internet shopping. That's especially true for gun sales because, well, you can't buy them on Amazon.
Damn it.
Anywho, Black Friday, big numbers, etc. As you no doubt know, Black Friday was also this past Friday. So, how did the firearm industry do?
NSSF®, The Firearm Industry Trade Association, revealed that the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) completed 530,156 background checks related to firearms for the week leading up to, and including, “Black Friday,” one of the busiest shopping days of the year. That figure is down from 2024’s total of 613,380 for the same time period. The 2025 total is a 13.6 percent decrease from the 2024 figure.
NICS completed 165,183 background checks on “Black Friday” alone. The figure approximates firearm sales at retail on that day, although it also includes background checks for other purposes related to firearms such as approvals for concealed carry permits. NSSF will later this week release its adjusted NICS figures for November reflecting only those background checks related to the sale of a firearm at retail.
NSSF has worked with firearm retailers to spread out special sales offers to customers throughout the week leading up to “Black Friday” so as not to overwhelm FBI NICS on a single day, which can result in longer than normal wait times.
“The background checks reported by the FBI are in keeping with the trends NSSF has seen throughout the year. While the overall trends are still coming off the peaks experienced in recent years, firearm sales remain consistently strong,” explained Joe Bartozzi, NSSF President and CEO. “These figures tell us that there is a continued strong appetite for lawful firearm ownership by law-abiding Americans and that firearm manufacturers across the country continue to deliver the quality firearms our customers have come to expect.”
Let's understand, that's an impressive number of guns sold in a single day. There's nothing at all to be concerned about there, either. It's not even the fact that Trump is president, since we already knew he'd won by Black Friday last year. This isn't a Trump Slump so much as a return to more historic norms after the pandemic and instability of the Biden years.
But sales for the week were down, which isn't great. It means fewer people are buying guns, and that will potentially lead to some contraction within the industry itself.
That sucks for anyone who gets caught up in that contraction. However, on the macro level, this isn't terrible news or anything. It just is what it is. Things don't go up forever, unfortunately, and with something like guns that are durable and don't have any planned obsolescence to deal with, it's even more likely to happen from time to time.
In fact, the impressive thing is how sales keep doing so well under those conditions.
The month overall should be more enlightening, as well as next month's numbers, as the NSSF notes that sales increase toward the end of the year due to both holiday sales and the upcoming hunting season. With some good fortune, the numbers will be strong.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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