Firearm business still increasing

Shooting Industry, Sept, 2008 by Russ Thurman

The industry continues to defy predictions of a drop in sales, with a continuing increase in the number of firearm background checks. For the first seven months of 2008, there was an 9.42 percent increase in background checks over the same months in 2007, according to the FBI's NICS. As noted in our previous analysis of the NICS data, the increases this year are impressive since 2007 was a record-setting year in background checks.

During the first seven months of 2008, NICS conducted 6,542,806 background checks, an increase of 563,291 over the same period in 2007.

While the background-check data is not a "pure" indication of "sales," it is the best indicator of what is happening nationally in the firearm market. Let's face it, customers don't go to gun shops to fill out a Form 4473 because they're bored. They're willing to go through the background check for only one reason: To buy a firearm.

2006  775,518    820,679    845,219  700,373

2007  894,608    914,954    975,806  840,271

2008  942,556  1,021,130  1,040,863  940,961

2006  626,270  616,097  631,156  833,070

2007  803,051  792,943  757,884  917,358

2008  886,183  819,891  891,224