Guns Are Selling: March NICS Numbers Show Trend Reversal
For a while there, it looked like American gun sales numbers were going to trend down, down down—but that trend has reversed, and in March of 2026, we saw sales of well over a million guns, and a year-over-year increase.
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NICS numbers are compiled from queries to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Buy a gun at a dealer, and when they query NICS to see if you’re a dangerous criminal, that query is added to the monthly NICS number.
This is obviously an imperfect measure of firearms sales in the US, because some states rely on their own criminal background check system and not NICS, and a NICS query does not guarantee a single firearm sale; it could be no guns sold, multiple firearms sold, or even just represent paperwork like a CCW license application.
For that reason, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) does not treat the feds’ NICS numbers as gospel, but instead releases a number adjusted by their own members’ figures. And for March 2026, that number is up year-over-year.
March NICS figures
According to the NSSF, their adjusted NICS number shows 1,412,917 guns were sold in the United States in March of 2026. That is an increase of 1.9 percent over the same month in 2025, and it is just one more example of a phenomenon we noted last fall, when NICS numbers started to turn around from their slide—bad news sells guns, and there has been plenty of bad news this winter.
However, we should note that the FBI’s unadjusted NICS numbers show 2,212,094 queries in March of 2026, a 10.5 percent slide from their unadjusted NICS number of 2,470,705 queries in March of 2025. We suspect the NSSF’s numbers are more accurate, but it is worth pointing out the discrepancy.
Professional hoser with fudd-ish leanings.
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From: Virginia