Two things conspired to bring about the “Trump Slump”. The first is that President Trump is not Hillary Clinton. Gun owners are not as concerned about being able to purchase the gun and ammunition they want. There is less fear that emotionally driven politics will be used to deny them the guns they wish to have.
The second part is many NICS checks are for other purposes. Once we take out the background checks done for permits and permit renewals, The numbers drop. The numbers of permit and permit recheck numbers for December of 2018 were 737,926 and 285,273, respectively. Those are 1,023,199 checks not done for firearms purchases.
Last month I predicted there would be over 2.5 million NICS checks for December of 2018. It was an accurate prediction. If, as expected, about .56 firearms are added to the private stock for each NICS check done, then NICS checks in December will translate into 1.42 million additional private firearms.
That increases the number of private firearms in the United States to about 433 million at this time. In April of 2018, I predicted the U.S. stock of private firearms would be more than 430 million by the end of 2018.
Over 177 million of those firearms have been added during the 20 years of NICS checks since 1998. A hundred million were added in the last seven years.
“Tis the season...”
Sadly, 31% of Americans believe we will need those firearms within five years for another civil war. I hope they are wrong, but hope is not a strategy. I am preparing as if they were right. Clearly, I have a lot of company.