Black Friday 2021 Gun Sales: “Blued Wave” Continues

People tend to be a bit politer than this at the gun store. Can’t imagine why.

Anti-gunners sometimes refer to their voting bloc as a “blue wave.” I like to call ours the “blued wave.”

Beginning in March 2020, right alongside the COVID-19 pandemic, America began buying guns. All the guns. We all remember the empty shelves, denuded of everything with a firing pin. As the numbers climbed up past 20 million, with as many as 8 million of those representing people who bought guns for the first time, something became obvious: Not all of those people could possibly have started out as Second Amendment supporters. Something else is obvious, too: Once you learn the truth about guns, gun laws, and gun rights, it’s very hard to vote for an anti-gunner again. That’s why today’s news, collated from last week’s holiday gun sales, is so refreshing.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the firearm industry trade association, revealed that the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) processed 687,788 background checks during the week leading up to and including Black Friday. FBI’s NICS recorded 187,585 on Black Friday alone, ranking it among the Top 10 Highest Days for NICS checks and a .50 percent increase from Black Friday 2020 (186,645). The NICS checks are unadjusted, representing raw data from the FBI and are inclusive of all background checks related to firearms.

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 Black Friday, which can result in longer than normal wait times.

“This figure of over 687,000 background checks is truly remarkable,” said Joe Bartozzi, NSSF President and CEO. “This year has already been shaping up to be the second strongest year for firearm sales on record, second only to 2020’s record-breaking number of 21 million background checks for a firearm sale. We anticipate, based on annual data, that firearm sales will rise during the final month of the year coinciding with hunting seasons and holiday sales. This figure, though, underscores the appetite for lawful firearm ownership in America and the resilience of the firearm and ammunition industry to meet that demand.”