© 2025
In touch with the world ... at home on the High Plains
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Our translator station serving St. Francis and Cheyenne County at 96.3 FM is off the air due to an air conditioning breakdown at its leased transmitter site, making it too hot for HPPR's equipment to operate. We are currently working to fix the situation. We apologize for the loss of service and ask listeners to tune to KZNK at 90.1 FM or listen on line through the player above or HPPR's mobile app.

The Holiday Season Is Big Business For The Gun Industry

An assortment of rifles sits on racks at Delta Arsenal in Wallingford, Connecticut.
Ryan Caron King
/
Connecticut Public Radio
An assortment of rifles sits on racks at Delta Arsenal in Wallingford, Connecticut.

The holiday shopping season is big business for most retailers in the United States, and the gun industry is no exception. The last three months of the year represent almost a third of annual sales for firearms retailers each year.

Loading...

Methodology

The original data comes from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) report, updated monthly by the FBI. This data set is published as a PDF, but BuzzFeed News publishes a downloadable CSV version that can be opened with Excel, Google Spreadsheet, or any other spreadsheet software.

Guns & America analyzed 20 years of numbers from the NICS database, from 1999-2018.

Based on Small Arms Analytics & Forecasting’s methodology and the National Shooting Sports Foundation Adjusted-NICS, this analysis uses data from handgun, long gun and multiple firearm permits. The FBI defines this category as those cases with “multiple types of firearms selected.”

The permits and permit rechecks were not included in the analysis. As explained by this post from the National Shooting Sports Foundation, these two categories are “used by several states such as Connecticut, Illinois, and Utah for CCW [Concealed Carry Weapons] permit application checks as well as checks on active CCW [Concealed Carry Weapons] permit databases.”

The data for the graphic titled “Top 10: Single-Day Background Check Request” includes all the categories, as, in this case, the FBI publishes aggregated data only.

Guns & America is a public media reporting project on the role of guns in American life.

Copyright 2019 KCUR 89.3

Luis Melgar