It’s been about a month since the last update from the world of firearms retail. There honestly been little new to report.
Ammo supply still remains tight. There are signs that it is starting to improve, however slow the recovery is. It’s still going to be a while before you see that box of your favorite oddball cartridge on the shelf, but the more popular loadings are starting to be more available. I’d also note that online prices seem to be coming back down. I don’t know if that’s due people balking at paying $1 a round for 9mm fmj or if there is more in the warehouses.
A recent check of inventory at my place of employ showed we had around 400 guns in stock. That’s more than have been in the store for more than a year. And it is more than just cheap, turkish import home defense shotguns, which had been the majority of the stock last year. Our latest shipment included a wide variety of firearms, from .22’s to 12 gauge over/unders.
NICS background checks have slowed some. June was the first month in almost three years that did not have a year-over-year increase in the number of checks. You have to go back to December of 2018 to find the last month that didnt show an increase over the previous year. All that said, there were still 3,054,726 checks performed in June. Keep in mind, last June was the start of the BLM/AntiFA riots across the country.
Through the first six months of the year there have been more than 22 million checks run. If the trend continues, there will be well north of 40 million checks run for the year.
It’s important to keep in mind the number of checks can’t be used as a one to one correlation for guns sold. A large percentage are run for purposes other than gun sales. The NSSF estimates that number to be around 40%.
Commentary From the Front Lines 10 July
It’s been about a month since the last update from the world of firearms retail. There honestly been little new to report.
Ammo supply still remains tight. There are signs that it is starting to improve, however slow the recovery is. It’s still going to be a while before you see that box of your favorite oddball cartridge on the shelf, but the more popular loadings are starting to be more available. I’d also note that online prices seem to be coming back down. I don’t know if that’s due people balking at paying $1 a round for 9mm fmj or if there is more in the warehouses.
A recent check of inventory at my place of employ showed we had around 400 guns in stock. That’s more than have been in the store for more than a year. And it is more than just cheap, turkish import home defense shotguns, which had been the majority of the stock last year. Our latest shipment included a wide variety of firearms, from .22’s to 12 gauge over/unders.
NICS background checks have slowed some. June was the first month in almost three years that did not have a year-over-year increase in the number of checks. You have to go back to December of 2018 to find the last month that didnt show an increase over the previous year. All that said, there were still 3,054,726 checks performed in June. Keep in mind, last June was the start of the BLM/AntiFA riots across the country.
Through the first six months of the year there have been more than 22 million checks run. If the trend continues, there will be well north of 40 million checks run for the year.
It’s important to keep in mind the number of checks can’t be used as a one to one correlation for guns sold. A large percentage are run for purposes other than gun sales. The NSSF estimates that number to be around 40%.