KENNEWICK, Wash. - During Black Friday, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System saw their highest number of transactions to date and up 20% from Black Friday last year.
The national database shows almost 155,000 guns were purchased on Black Friday alone. That was up by about 25,000 more than the year before.
For the entire weekend, nationwide sales soared 31%.
The sales staff at Ranch & Home in Kennewick said they've seen a spike in sales since right around election time. One sales person reports that they went from selling around 10 to 15 guns a day before the election to about 30 today.
He said during black Friday weekend, they sold about 50 guns a day on average.
"They never really dropped. Its been right across the board too, from concealable pistols, to the long guns, to the tactical weapons to the home defense shot guns," said Dave Parks with Ranch & Home.
Parks said the economy and the election are the two biggest reasons gun shoppers give for wanting to buy a new weapon.
At one point during Black Friday the FBI said their NICS call centers experienced two outages: One for 14 minutes and another for 18 minutes. These were due to the large call volume for background checks across the country.
Below are the # of NICS transactions for post-Thanksgiving weekend 2012 and 2011:
11/23/12...............................................154,873
11/24/12................................................88,419
11/25/12................................................40,131
283,423
11/25/11..............................................129,166
11/26/11...............................................59,957
11/27/11...............................................26,069
215,192
All NICS program general information and statistics may be found at the link below:
