Sales of firearms on Black Friday were surprisingly strong, with some retailers reporting their best post-Thanksgiving sales day since the 2020 COVID-19 crisis.
“This was our best Black Friday sale since COVID. Full stop,” said Justin Anderson, the marketing manager at Hyatt Guns in Charlotte, North Carolina, one of the nation’s biggest firearms stores.
The FBI reported robust requests for gun sales background checks, and November’s overall numbers are expected again to top over 1 million sold, continuing an unbroken five-year trend.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the industry trade group that tracks the sales numbers, said that the FBI recorded 169,906 sales background checks on Friday and 613,380 during the week.
While sales overall were down 9%, NSSF said that the healthy numbers showed a continued appetite for protection.
“The background checks reported by the FBI are in keeping with the trends NSSF has seen throughout the year. While the overall trends are still coming off the peaks experienced in recent years, firearm sales remain consistently strong, with over a million per month for more than five years running,” said Joe Bartozzi, NSSF’s president and CEO.
NICS Checks Top 613,000 for ‘Black Friday’ Week • @NSSF https://t.co/gIcR8YGgPT
— Larry Keane (@lkeane) December 2, 2024
“These figures tell us that there is a continued strong appetite for lawful firearm ownership by law-abiding Americans and that firearm manufacturers across the country continue to deliver the quality firearms our customers have come to expect,” Bartozzi added.
Hyatt’s Anderson, who Secrets regularly checks in with for a street-level analysis on gun sales, said he expected a dip in sales because of the election of President-elect Donald Trump.
“Sales online and in our retail stores were excellent and, frankly, a bit surprising. While we expected numbers to stay somewhat strong, given the strong economic outlook, our experience told us that gun-friendly leadership in Washington usually leads to a dip in sales. That was far from the case this year, and we’re glad to see it,” he told Secrets.
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Anderson also said buyers indicated that they believe the economy is getting better.
“Record Black Friday spending across the retail space tells me people are looking forward to a future with more money in their pockets. Our weekend numbers bear that out. We sold many big-ticket items — priced $2,000 and above. We also saw more people choosing to pay in full instead of taking advantage of our layaway program. That tells me that people are opening up the purse strings. This may be the first step in the right direction for the economy as a whole. We can only hope!” he said.