The National Instant Background Check System (NICS) numbers are in for September of 2024. They are slightly higher than those for September of 2023. There have been about two percent more gun sales than in September of 2023 and about three percent more background checks. Those increases are sufficient to place 2024 as the fifth highest September in the 25 years of NICS records, starting in 1999.

In 2024, September numbers are about 6 percent lower than they were in August. Handguns are down about 8%, long guns are up about 2 percent. Multiple gun sales are down 2.4% and other gun sales are down about 1.4%. As usual, handguns are the most popular, with long guns in second, other in third and multiple having the smallest number of NICS checks and sales. The proportions can be seen in the bar and line graphic.

August and September tend to have roughly the same overall number of gun sales. More long guns may be sold in September because of the coming hunting seasons.  August has been slightly higher than September for the last seven years. With the September sales, the total stock of privately owned firearms in the United States is approximately 512 million.

Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party candidate for president, is well known for her extreme positions on firearms and the Second Amendment. Last minute changes in her positions are unlikely to change the views of Second Amendment supporters who have followed her career. Now that Harris has a good chance of becoming president, her consistent threat to ban some of the most popular rifles in the United States, aka “assault weapons”, may have contributed to increased long gun sales. The second assassination attempt on former President and Presidential candidate Donald Trump happened on September 15, 2024.  It probably did not bump the numbers  for September much more than already occurred with the first assassination attempt, which missed killing the former president by a few millimeters.

Increased political tensions, a chaotic world environment, the reminder of natural disasters from Hurricane Helene, and the potential shortages of a longshoreman’s strike, are all plausible reasons for October numbers to be higher than the number of gun sales in October of 2023. The trend of 62 months of sales higher than one million per month is unlikely to be broken soon. November and December are traditionally high months for firearm sales. If President Trump is re-elected in November, firearm sales could drop below a million in January, though it seems unlikely. A president Harris administration would accelerate gun sales as people without semi-automatic rifles would attempt to get some before they are banned, and/or before the Harris administration finds a way to take control of the Supreme Court and reverse the Heller, McDonald, Caetano, and Bruen decisions.

A Harris presidency combined with a Democratic House of Representatives and a Democratic Senate might succeed in a radical transformation of the United States. The First and Second Amendments are routinely violated by the current administration. Kamala Harris’ previous statements are considerably more radical than even President Biden’s. The current administration has openly talked about bringing the United States Supreme Court under the control of a Democratic Party controlled executive branch and/or a Democratic Party controlled Congress. The precedents to criminally charge the opposition party candidate, to jail his lawyers and supporters, to censor vast amounts of opposition speech through the influence of the tech giants, have been set by the Biden administration.

The defiance of a few circuit courts to implement the restoration of Second Amendment rights appears to hinge on the hope a Harris administration will be able to extinguish an originalist and textualist Supreme Court.

About Dean Weingarten:

Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.