Thoughts and Findings from Research and Readings
Introducing the Concealed Carry Weapons License Database
This blog post is a bit strange to write, but I have two items I wanted to share with other gun researchers. The first is that I have completed data collection for a new database of state and county level records for concealed carry license applications, issuances, and denials. The second is that this is…
Despite strong gun sales, NRA membership apparently shrank in 2020
2020 was a gangbusters year for gun sales with a likely 20 million total gun sales. And the gun industry has been willing to say this is a strong sign of future support for gun rights going forward. An August press release from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) even inferred that at least 5…
NICS checks: January 2021 Edition
Someday I will blog about things I research besides these NICS posts. I promise. January most likely had over 2 million gun sales (using the raw NICS numbers for Handgun, Long gun, Other, Multiple, Private Handgun, Private Long Gun, and Private other NICS checks, I get 1.98 million, pretty darn close). I caught a news…
Quick Compare: 2020 vs 2019 NICS Numbers
2020 has passed, and with that we can finally start saying how the whole year stacked up compared to previous years in terms of gun sales (or more appropriately “sales” since its pretty much proxies all the way down when it comes to measuring gun sales). Here I am using the NICS data from the…
Are all gun sales data the same?
If one wants to know “how many guns were sold?” in X year or Y month, there is only one source that is commonly accepted at this point, the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). However, the raw data from the NICS comes with many caveats. The biggest are 1) each background check…
Did Gun Prevalence Influence 2020 Gun Sales?
I have previously written some thoughts about the use of FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check (NICS) data for David Yamane’s Gun Curious Blog, and now that the close of 2020 is approaching I expect many people (and journalists) will begin looking at the NICS numbers to see just how much gun sales surged this…
A first post
Hello! This post to just make sure I know how this works!
Trent Steidley 