FBI Gets Record Number of Requests for Background Checks on Black Friday, Blasting Last Year’s Record

by Sierra Marlee | November 26, 2017 4:45 pm

The Federal Bureau of Investigation received a record-breaking number of background check requests this Black Friday.

In 2016, they received a total of 185,713 background check requests on gun sales for Black Friday. This year? A whopping 203,086. I think I know what I’m getting for Christmas.

[1]

As you know, anyone who wants to legally purchase a gun from an FFL needs to undergo a background check through the FBI before they can own the firearm. Different states have different laws, with some postponing the sale for 7 days before the buyer can actually take the gun home.

When I turned 18, I bought a shotgun for home defense. I was in the store for a total of 35 minutes, with only 15 of that actually being me purchasing the gun and shells. The rest was spent looking at guns I couldn’t yet afford, which was most of them.

Despite the high number of background checks, the number of weapons sold could be even higher with buyers often looking to buy more than one weapon at once. I mean, how else are you supposed to take your child hunting if you only have the one gun?

We don’t have stats on which guns were the most sold, or which states these requests came from, but I imagine that a lot of southern and western states are responsible for the bulk of these requests. Given the fact that we now have a Republican President, one would have expected the number of firearms purchased annually to decline. However, the non-stop war on our Second Amendment and the desire for people to not only be able to protect themselves and their loved ones, but also to hunt and engage in other outdoor activities, is probably largely responsible for the increase in purchases.

The Second Amendment was recently brought into question yet again by anti-gun leftists after the Las Vegas massacre and the shooting at the Sutherland Springs church. While we still don’t know a whole heck of a lot about Stephen Paddock, who unleashed a hail of bullets on unsuspecting concert-goers in Vegas, we do know that the reason the Sutherland Springs shooter – Devin Kelley – was able to legally purchase a firearm was because the Air Force didn’t communicate his criminal record to the FBI. When he went in for a background check, his history of violence didn’t show up in the database, which allowed him to acquire the gun that he would later use to kill innocent people trying to worship.