Black Friday gun sales checks break record

The Associated Press reports the Federal Bureau of Investigation “processed a record 185,345 background checks” on Black Friday.

The FBI says more Americans had background checks conducted for gun purchases that day than on any other day on record.

The FBI launched the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in 1998 because of a mandate in the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, according to the FBI website.

The previous high for a single day was 177,170 on December 21, 2012, days after a shooting at a school in Newton, Connecticut, left 27 people, mostly children, dead.

“The numbers are just out, so we have not yet had the opportunity to gather viewpoints from across our industry to provide color commentary for what continues to be year-over-year healthy firearms sales”, Michael Bazinet, director of public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told Guns.com.

Black Friday is best known for breaking sales records.

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The spike in background checks coincided with a deadly gun attack at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

It looks like one of Black Friday’s biggest sellers wasn’t TVs or Xboxes – it was guns.

The demand for guns has been on the rise since President Barack Obama took office. Equally important: Though laws vary from state to state and from weapon to weapon, gun transactions between private parties – like many at gun shows – generally do not require background checks.

With more inexperienced people with a gun comes more potential for accidents. In the last decade, the agency has carried out more than 100 million checks – and denied more than 700,000 applications.