The unadjusted Jan. 2022 FBI NICS figure of 2,533,096 sounds big, but it is a 40 percent decrease from the same figures for Jan. 2021 (4,288,240).
Delving further, the guys over at NSSF adjust the figure to remove background checks not associated with gun sales– lots of law enforcement agencies use NICS for checks on carry permits– and came up with an even lower figure of 1,190,856, which is a decrease of 42 percent when stacked against the Jan. 2021 NSSF-adjusted NICS figure of 2,052,130.However, it should be noted that last month marks the 30th month in a row that has exceeded one million adjusted background checks in a single month, a figure the U.S. hit in July 2019 during the tail end of the Obama administration and hasn’t dropped below since.
It is just that the current sales are way less than the giant megalithic spike seen in 2020.
