Gun sales soared in March amid concerns that Democrats and their left-leaning allies were working to enact major gun restrictions at both the state and federal levels. The FBI’s National Criminal Background Check System (NICS) processed more potential gun owners last month than it did in March 2016, when Americans went on a buying spree out of fear Hillary Clinton might win the presidential election.
According to The Washington Free Beacon, the FBI processed 2,767,699 background checks in March 2018 — around 250,000 more than the previous record (set, of course, as noted above, in March 2016). Although it’s likely not all of those checks resulted in a gun purchase, the number shows that Americans are serious about not just protecting their Second Amendment rights, but exercising them.
As the WFB points out, though, the FBI background check numbers are a reliable way to predict gun sales, if only because NICS checks are run solely by federally licensed gun dealers. Many states do not require a background check for person-to-person gun purchases, so the number of total gun sales in March could be even higher.
“These statistics represent the number of firearm background checks initiated through the NICS,” the FBI said in a statement. “They do not represent the number of firearms sold. Based on varying state laws and purchase scenarios, a one-to-one correlation cannot be made between a firearm background check and a firearm sale.”
Although the numbers are staggering, the spike comes as no surprise to most people familiar with the current political landscape. Since the shooting in Parkland, Florida, Democrats have been pushing stricter gun regulations at both the state and national level, and their leftist base has even recently embraced the single most extreme position on gun control: repealing the Second Amendment and confiscating individual weapons.
Even though there’s a Republican president and a Republican Congress, that can’t make gun owners feel secure.
