The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) reported that February 2018 NSSF-adjusted National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) was down 2 percent versus the year ago.
The adjusted figure came to 1,271,942 versus 1,298,208 a year ago.
The decline follows drops of 8 percent in January, 12.2 percent in December and 7.1 percent in November. Overall, background checks were down 11.0 percent in 2017.
NSSF said the unadjusted February 2018 FBI NICS figure of 2,293,373 reflects a 3.1 percent increase from the unadjusted FBI NICS figure of 2,224,394 in February 2017.
The adjusted NICS data was derived 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.
