Even as Joe Sixpack was maxing out that last credit card on useless gadgets (but not flat screen TVs as Corning was so nice to warn), he was making sure to have enough in store for that one final Plan Z purchase. Guns. As KNDU reports, "Gun dealers flooded the FBI with background check requests from shoppers, smashing the single day record with a 32% increase from last year." USA Today has more: "Deputy Assistant FBI Director Jerry Pender said the checks, required by federal law, surged to 129,166 during the day, far surpassing the previous high of 97,848 on Black Friday of 2008." And in reality, the number is likely far greater: "The actual number of firearms sold last Friday is likely higher because multiple firearms can be included in a transaction by a single buyer. And the FBI does not track actual gun sales." And while Saudi Arabia is warning that women driving leads to the end of the world, in America women are now the marginal guy buyer: "Some gun industry analysts attributed the unusual surge to a convergence of factors, including an increasing number of first-time buyers seeking firearms for protection and women who are being drawn to sport shooting and hunting. Larry Keane, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said 25% of the purchases typically involve first-time buyers, many of them women. "I think there also is a burgeoning awakening of the American public that they do have a constitutional right to own guns," Keane said. Yet Keane said last Friday's number appeared to defy complete explanation. "It's really pretty amazing," he said." Indeed it is, and unlike Europe, where with the exception of Switzerland the best the local rioters can do is some imported (from the US) tear gas, when the Arab Spring finally makes landfall, it will be time to use up those one way international frequent flier miles (assuming of course that American and soon others don't cancel them).

More from KNDU:

In the Tri-Cities, sporting goods stores say they've seen an increase in sales in the last four years. Griggs in Pasco saw a 25 % increase in sales from Black Friday last year. Wholesale Sports in Kennewick has an increase of 35 percent%. "Normally it's electronics and people are out there looking for that screaming hot deal, and we were discussing that maybe women were out doing that shopping and their husbands were out buying their own Christmas gifts," says Charlie Grigg, whose family owns the ACE Hardware Griggs store. Grigg says more than half of the calls that come into the store are for the gun department. They even had to put in extra phone lines to do background checks. Managers from both Griggs and Wholesale Sport say the presidential elections have a big effect on sales. Sales went up four years ago when Obama was elected into office and they say with the new elections around the corner, many fear the President will work on changing gun control laws during his second term in office.

And for the attention and reading challenged: