NICS for March, 2025 Gun Sales Continue to Slide

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The adjusted firearm sales for March of 2025 are the eighth highest in the 26 year history of the National Instant background Check System (NICS), administered by the FBI. The numbers before 2016 are not as accurate, because the National Shooting Sports Foundation, (NSSF) started adjusting the number to account for the large number of firearm permit checks and rechecks in 2016.

No permit rechecks were entered before 2016, and total permit checks were less than 10 million a year. Permit and permit rechecks peaked at about 20 million a year in 2021. Illinois alone had almost 8 million permit and permit rechecks in 2021. In 2022, Illinois reformed their check and recheck law. The number of permit and permit rechecks in Illinois dropped to 4 million. The number of NICS checks in March of 2025, 2.58 million, is the lowest number of checks done in March since March of 2017, when the number of checks was 2.43 million.

The adjusted NICS chart for 26 years shows the number of gun sales has been on a downward slide since 2020. The numbers are reasonably high if the 2020 election year and the four years of the Biden administration are seen as an historical anomaly. The perception of losing the Republic to a perpetual “deep state” oligarchy was the greatest in those four years out of the last hundred or more years.

The March, 2025 numbers show 68 consecutive months of firearm sales over one million, as adjusted by the NSSF.  Overall firearm sales for March of 2025 are about 96% of those a year ago, in March of 2024. Handgun sales are down a little, long gun sales dropped a little more. Sales of “other”, which are believed to primarily be receivers which can be made into either handguns or long guns, dropped about 15%. NICS checks for the sales of multiple firearm on one 4473 form were essentially unchanged.

The first quarter of 2025 has added about 3.18 million firearms to the privately owned stock of firearms in the United States of America.  The number added to private stock is adjusted downward from NICS checks because about 13% of NICS checks are for sales of previously owned firearms. The total number of private firearms in the private stock at the end of 2024 was approximately 516 million. The firearm sales for March of 2025 bring the estimation of the total stock of private firearms in the United States of America to about 519 million.

Prediction of future sales trends is a perilous exercise. This correspondent believes sales will continue on a downward slide. The Trump administration is popular among the middle class, where most firearms are sold. Fear of despotism has receded from a majority of people, even as a minority of the left attempts to create a climate of fear of President Trump. This is much harder to do in a diverse media landscape. The media has shifted from a top-down concentrated mediacracy, integrated with the power establishment, to a diverse set of multiple outlets competing for space on multiple platforms. This is much closer to the media which existed at the founding, where most platforms were small, diverse, and connected to a political ideology. The ideology connected to a particular source was well known to its readership. In such a media landscape, a marketplace of ideas exists and competes for attention. It is difficult to control a narrative and shape public opinion in such a diverse media marketplace.

The world political landscape is shifting. More people feel secure under a Trump administration than they did under a Biden administration. As a new economic order is shaped, uncertainty about near-future economic outlooks is likely to result in lower discretionary spending for a year or two. If, as seems likely, the Trumpian economic system results in a more prosperous United States, sales will rebound. Expect domestic sales to gain market share over imports.

©2025 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

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