American gun buyers have shattered the record for monthly firearm sales, with FBI data showing a whopping 4.14 million background checks in January 2020, which serves as a proxy for purchases. According to recent figures from the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), gun sales in January surged by around 9.5 percent month-over-month and a whopping 60 percent compared to January 2019. But while the gun sales trend has seen a steady rise since 2005, when nearly 9 million checks were done, the past year saw extraordinary activity, with almost 40 percent more checks compared to 2019. The surge in gun sales in 2020 was the biggest yearly spike in both absolute figures and year-over-year percent change, since the NICS system started tracking in 1998. Last year’s surge eclipsed the second biggest year-over-year rise of 19 percent in 2016, another election year. While gun sales tend to spike in election years, …
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