From Steve Sailer’s iSteve Blog comes this: Merry Christmas! Record Number of Americans Bought Guns on Black Friday. It’s a reasonable guess that there are some 129,000 more guns in the hands of free American citizens than there were the day before. Huzzah!
Some happy stats (source):
NICS Firearm Background Checks — Friday, November 25, 2011
Total NICS Checks—129,166 (highest day ever) 32.01 percent over Friday, November 28, 2008
Federal Checks—81,609 (highest day ever) 26.69 percent over Friday, November 28, 2008
POC State Checks—47,557 (4th highest day)
Other Records
NICS Contracted Call Centers—69,497 (highest day ever) 16.30 percent over Friday, November 28, 2008
NICS E-Check—11,953 (highest day ever) 119.76 percent over Friday, February 11, 2011
Ht to Maggie’s Farm.
Impressive. What would be interesting to know is how the economic/political pressures affected that number. That is to say, the lack of extra cash presumably meant some people who would have bought a gun, didn’t; but did the current economic/political stresses cause other people, who wouldn’t have otherwise, buy? And then, did they buy because it is a good investment, with potentially better interest return (and in any case much more fun) than their current bank account or because they are spooked?
You can drive yourself nuts trying to figure out why people buy what they do. (For example; the AMC Gremlin and Tamagotchi…two products which make no sense to me.)
I prefer to bask in the impressive scale to which Americans “self-arm”. You can’t really match a 1:1 ratio of purchases to background checks but it’s a ballpark figure and it’s incredibly huge. A number like 129,000 means ONE DAY’S private citizens’ self-financed purchases might reasonably exceed the active duty membership of scores of countries. For example; Peru or the Philippines (114K and 120K respectively). We beat that in ONE day!
It’s apples to oranges but it’s as much fun as pondering a zombie apocalypse. (Crude source is wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_troops)
Nothing fills me with Christmas spirit like the thought of millions of ornery citizens who are voluntarily armed at their own expense. It keeps the pendulum from swinging too far on either side of the spectrum.
I have every intention of buying a few guns this holiday season- scary black guns that hold lots of bullets, and load themselves between shots!
Oh quite! But I am just no good at basking. I Like driving myself nuts.
Suggested additional statistic;
Number of Liberal Media Commentators having hysterics when told; all of them.
Excellent! These would be the “reporters” that looked at a .38 revolver and declared it an “automatic assault weapon”?
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