Adjusted firearms background checks reached 1,113,535 in August against 966,809 in August 2019, a gain of 15.2 percent.
The unadjusted figures of 2,341,363 checks conducted through the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System last month is a nearly 15.5 percent increase from the unadjusted FBI NICS figure of 2,026,309 in August 2018.
The adjusted NICS data were derived from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) by subtracting out NICS purpose code permit checks and permit rechecks used by states for CCW permit application checks as well as checks on active CCW permit databases. NSSF started subtracting permit rechecks in February 2016.
July’s background checks, as adjusted by the NSSF, were up 1.1 percent and were up 0.7 percent in May, following a decline of 6.9 percent in April. For the overall second quarter, adjusted checks were still down due to April’s softness by 1.2 percent. First-quarter 2019 checks of 3.41 million showed a decrease of 8.5 percent.
