Gun Sales Soar on Black Friday

Gun sales on Black Friday skyrocketed, resulting in over 175,000 background checks.

According to CNN, it’s up to 600 FBI and contract call center employees to conduct the background checks in the three business days required by law. The number of checks averaged to about three per second, which is roughly three times the daily average.

“Traditionally, Black Friday is one of our busiest days for transaction volume,” FBI spokesman Stephen Fischer said.

The number of background checks this year set a record for a Black Friday, and it was the second highest number of checks in history. On December 21, 2012, a record 177,000 background checks were processed.

Employees of the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System worked through the weekend to process Friday’s gun buys.

“The challenge is to have staff keep up with this volume,” Fischer said. “We do that by limiting personal leave, asking employees to work extra shifts and reutilizing former … employees to serve in NICS during this busy period.”

An average of 500 gun background checks a day fail as a result of incomplete information, CNN said.

As Bearing Arms notes, the number of background checks isn’t a true count of the number of guns purchased on a given day, as one background check can be used for the purchase of multiple firearms. However, it does provide a general indication.

Breitbart News reported that there were 97,848 background checks on Black Friday under President George W. Bush. The number remained pretty much the same in 2009, but started to grow in 2010. In 2011, there were 129,166 background checks. That number increased to 154,873 in 2012, and then decreased to 144,758 in 2013.