NFA Checks Explode 167% as $0 Tax Stamps Reshape the Market

The $0 NFA tax stamp is doing exactly what you'd expect it to do.

February's NSSF-adjusted NICS data is out, and the headline number is fine: 1,265,320 background checks, up 3.5 percent year-over-year. Steady market, no drama. But the number buried further in the release is the one worth paying attention to. NFA checks (Form 1 and Form 4) hit 209,023 in February 2026, a 167 percent increase over February 2025's 78,295.

That's not a typo. 167 percent.

The $0 Stamp Effect

When the One Big Beautiful Bill zeroed out the NFA tax stamp effective January 1, 2026, the industry expected a flood. The flood showed up. An NSSF industry alert noted that 150,000 eForms were submitted on January 1 alone, compared to a normal daily average of about 2,500. One guy submitted 19 Form 4s for suppressors in the first 93 minutes of the year and had his first approval back within 31 hours.

February's 209,023 NFA checks suggest this isn't just a January sugar rush. People who were fence-sitting on suppressors and SBRs for years because of the $200 barrier are now pulling the trigger (figuratively and, eventually, literally). The NFA registration requirement still exists, and it's still a felony to possess an NFA item without a stamp. But free is free. Removing $200 from the equation on a $800 suppressor changes the math in a way that matters to normal buyers, not just collectors and enthusiasts who were already willing to eat the cost.

This is the first year NSSF has broken out monthly NFA checks as a separate data point, so we don't have a deep historical baseline. But 167 percent year-over-year growth is the kind of number that gets boardroom attention at every suppressor manufacturer in the country. Whether the eForms system can sustain this volume without grinding to a halt is another question entirely.

The Regular NICS Picture

Back to the bread-and-butter number. The February 2026 NSSF-adjusted NICS figure of 1,265,320 is a 3.5 percent increase compared to February 2025's 1,222,980.

The raw FBI NICS number actually went the other direction. The unadjusted figure of 1,933,972 represents a 13.5 percent decrease from February 2025's 2,236,637. If that sounds contradictory, it's because the unadjusted total includes permit checks and permit rechecks that have nothing to do with firearm transactions. The NSSF strips those out, and what's left is a more useful (if still imperfect) proxy for how many guns are moving across counters.

Here's the thing about NICS data: It isn't a sales figure. One background check might cover three guns. Another might cover a transaction that falls through. Twenty-eight states have at least one qualified alternative permit under the Brady Act, meaning a buyer with a valid CCW can skip the NICS check entirely. The actual number of firearms sold in February was almost assuredly higher than 1.27 million.

The trend line? Fine. Not great, not terrible. February 2026 sits comfortably in the range the industry has occupied since about 2017, somewhere between 1.1 million and 1.4 million adjusted checks for the month. The pandemic peak of February 2021 (1,387,076) and the Sandy Hook surge of February 2013 (1,634,309) are still well above where we are now.

The compound annual growth rate paints the same picture. The 1-year CAGR is 3.5 percent. Five years out, -1.6 percent. Ten years, basically flat at -0.3 percent. Over 15 years the CAGR rounds to 0.0 percent, meaning February demand has grown at roughly the rate of inflation since 2011. The market is bigger in raw numbers (963,746 adjusted checks in February 2011 vs. 1,265,320 this year), but the growth rate has been essentially zero on a compounding basis.

Top 5 States

The usual suspects, and the rankings barely budge month to month:

Adjusted NICS checks: Texas, Florida, California, Pennsylvania, Virginia

FBI NICS handgun checks: Texas, Florida, California, Pennsylvania, Virginia

FBI NICS long gun checks: Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, California, Virginia

California and Pennsylvania swap between handgun and long gun categories. Pennsylvania's hunting culture pushes it ahead on long guns while California's population gives it the edge on handguns. None of this is surprising if you've followed these NICS reports for more than about three months.

The Bigger Picture

Since NSSF started tracking adjusted NICS data in 2000, the running total has crossed 314 million background checks. That's not 314 million guns sold (the relationship between checks and sales isn't one-to-one), but it gives you some sense of the scale of civilian firearms ownership in this country.

The year-over-year chart for the last 12 months shows mostly flat-to-slightly-down months compared to the prior year, with a few exceptions. December 2025 ran notably behind December 2024. January and February 2026 have both shown modest gains. Whether that trend holds through spring and summer is anyone's guess, but there's no sign of either a panic-buying surge or a dramatic market contraction.

For anyone in the industry reading this: Steady is good. The years of wild swings (2013's panic, 2016's election surge, 2020's everything-at-once explosion) were exciting but unsustainable. A market hovering around 14 to 15 million adjusted checks per year, with modest single-digit growth, is a market that can actually plan inventory and make rational business decisions. That might not make for dramatic headlines, but your accountant will appreciate it.

The NICS Denial Picture

The cumulative federal denial numbers since NICS went live in November 1998: The system has denied 2,512,145 transactions over that period. The top reason, by a wide margin, is felony convictions at 1,268,210 denials, roughly half the total. Fugitive warrants and controlled substance use are a distant second and third at around 246,000 and 241,000, respectively.

The NICS Indices, the database of prohibited persons, currently holds 34.2 million active entries. The largest category is illegal/unlawful aliens at 16.2 million records, followed by adjudicated mental health at 8.3 million. Those numbers reflect the total pool of records in the system, not the number of denied transactions.

The NSSF-adjusted NICS data were derived by subtracting out NICS purpose code permit checks and permit rechecks used by states for CCW permit application checks as well as checks on active CCW permit databases. Though not a direct correlation to firearms sales, the adjusted data provide a more useful picture of current market conditions. Source: FBI NICS and NSSF research.