Will Biden Surpass Obama As America’s Top Gun Salesman?

February 05, 2021
By Mark Chesnut

Given President Joe Biden’s seeming inability to understand what is going on around him most of the time, would it be a surprise to any Firearms News readers that he is already unwittingly adding to the growing arsenals of law-abiding American gun owners?

Recent figures from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) show that Americans bought more guns in January, when the presidential election was finally decided, than in any other January since records have been kept. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the January 2012 NSSF-adjusted National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) figure of 2.05 million is an increase of 75.2 percent from last January.

“Americans are continuing to purchase firearms at a blistering pace,” said Mark Oliva, NSSF director of public affairs. “It can’t be discounted that many of these background checks for the purchase of a firearm are attributed to threats by the Biden administration to enact the most radical and far-reaching gun control agenda ever proposed.”

Some observers had expected the record gun sales of 2020 to finally begin to fizzle with the coming of the new year. However, with mostly pro-gun President Donald Trump on the way out and the new Biden administration adding to the already strong threat to the Second Amendment, just the opposite seems to have occurred.

“January’s NICS figures clearly spell out that the demand of law-abiding Americans to purchase firearms isn’t abating. It is growing,” Oliva said. “Three of the top 10 weeks and one top 10 single day for the highest number of FBI NICS background checks occurred in January. Taken into context that all but one of the top 10 weeks and four other top 10 single-day records occurred during the 2020, when 21 million background checks were conducted, these are a jaw-dropping figures to start the New Year.”

Oliva added what so many in the so-called “mainstream” media seem to be ignoring as they fawn over Biden and his multiple schemes to remake America, including a record number of executive orders in his first two weeks on the job. As Oliva puts it, “The Biden administration has yet to put forth a single proposal to tackle the crime, lawlessness, rioting and looting that has plagued this nation for the year.”

That, folks, is the problem with the gun-ban agenda. Taking firearms from law-abiding Americans or making them illegal to own by the lawful doesn’t change a thing, since criminals don’t follow any laws, much less firearms laws. Thinking such laws would be effective shows that Biden isn’t the only one on the anti-gun side not thinking clearly.

Incidentally, the adjusted NICS data were 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 in order to show a more accurate gun sales number. NSSF started subtracting permit rechecks in February 2016.

Freelance writer and editor Mark Chesnut is the owner/editorial director at Red Setter Communications LLC. An avid hunter, shooter and political observer, he has been covering Second Amendment issues and politics on a near-daily basis for the past 20 years.