The FBI processed a record number of firearms background checks on Black Friday – the same day that Robert Lewis Dear allegedly killed three people and wounded nine others at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado.

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A record 185,345 background checks – roughly two a second – were processed last Friday, the agency said on Tuesday. The FBI received 5% more requests than the same day last year. Before this Black Friday, last year’s unofficial sale shopping holiday was the second highest day for firearm background checks. Black Fridays from 2012 and 2013 also made it to the FBI’s list of top 10 days for background checks, with 154,873 and 144,758 checks respectively.



“This was an approximate 5% increase over the 175,754 received on Black Friday 2014,” Stephen Fischer, the FBI’s chief of multimedia productions, told USA Today. “The previous high for receipts were the 177,170 received on 21 December 2012.”

That previous record for the most background checks in a single day was about a week after 20 children and six adults were shot to death at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut. In the week following the massacre, a total of 953,613 background checks were processed.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Record days and weeks for NICS firearm background checks. Photograph: The National Instant Criminal Background Check System

FBI background checks processed by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System are conducted for federally licensed gun purchases and for permits to carry guns. A background check does not mean a gun was purchased but manufacturers rely on the background check statistics as a measurement of the industry’s health. Additionally, multiple guns can be purchased with one sale, which requires just one background check.

The FBI started processing background checks for potential gun owners in 1998 as part of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act.

The demand for guns has been on the rise since president Barack Obama took office. According to the above graph published by the NICS, the top 10 days and top 10 weeks for the highest number of background checks have all taken place during Obama’s two terms. Obama has previously called for stricter gun control and did so again after the Colorado shooting on Friday.

“The last thing Americans should have to do, over the holidays or any day, is comfort the families of people killed by gun violence,” Obama said in a statement on Saturday, a day after the Planned Parenthood shooting.



This is not normal. We can’t let it become normal. If we truly care about this – if we’re going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience – then we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them. Period. Enough is enough.

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Renewed calls for tougher gun control laws sent gun stocks surging earlier this year. After a shooting at Umpqua Community College left 10 dead, including a gunman, Obama said that it should not be “easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun”. At the time, Democratic presidential and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton unveiled a plan calling for tougher background checks at gun shows and online.

Such calls sent gun stocks surging – by as much as 7% – on expectations of increased sales.

According to an analysis by CNN Money, over the last five years Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger stocks have gained 320%, outperforming profitable companies like Apple. Smith & Wesson sales hit a record high of $626m last year, up 6.7% from $587.5m in 2013.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.