The August 2026 National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) numbers, as adjusted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), show an increase of 2.2% over August of 2025. The numbers also show an increase of 10% of overall NICS background checks for August of 2026 over August of 2025. From NSSF:
The August 2026 NSSF-adjusted National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) figure of 1,115,410 is an increase of 2.2 percent compared to the August 2025 NSSF-adjusted NICS figure of 1,091,342. For comparison, the unadjusted August 2026 FBI NICS figure of 1,917,379 reflects a 10.0 percent increase from the unadjusted FBI NICS figure of 1,743,509 in August 2025.
The chart for the last 12 months of adjusted NICS firearm sales shows the trend. After January of 2026, every month in the year has exceeded the adjusted NICS figures for the previous month in 2025. NSSF adjusts the raw NICS figures from the FBI by pulling out the background checks done for permits and permit rechecks. Those can be large percentages of the total. The number of permit rechecks has dropped as Illinois, in particular, stopped checking every permit every month.
Firearm sales have had ups and downs, but since August of 2012, they have been at or over 1 million during the month with the single exception of 2019 during President Trump’s first term.
Firearm sales, especially among first time buyers, thrive during times of uncertainty.
The United States is in the middle of the Trumpian/MAGA counterrevolution against what has become an insufferable, anti-American Progressive establishment. This change in power structure in the government of the United States has created considerable stress and uncertainty. It has to create stress and uncertainty if the Republic is to be saved.
President Trump also managed to create a majority originalist/textualist Supreme Court for the first time in 90 years, at the very end of his first term. The court is doing quite a bit to restore Constitutional limitations on the government of the United States. Such things create considerable domestic uncertainty.
In foreign affairs, President Trump is not beholding to the legacy media. Therefore he is able and willing to act in the best interest of the United States. This contradicts the Progressives in the State Department and upsets the tidy situation of a created fall of United States power and dominance in world affairs. Such power was instrumental in creating a de facto Pax Americana, continuing the Pax Britannica after WWII, so as to insure freedom of navigation of the world’s oceans. The current conflict in the middle east is a direct application of Pax Americana.
These actions lead to uncertainty in international affairs. A combination of these uncertainties, along with ever increasing productivity reducing the constant dollar costs of firearms and ammunition, have lead to the prolonged boom in firearm sales from 2012 until present. Sales of Silencers/suppressor and short barreled rifles and short barreled shotguns are likely to boom as the NFA constraints are eliminated. NFA NICS checks, as shown by NSSF, are three times as high as they were in August of 2025. A 200% increase results in a total three times as large.
The August 2026 NFA figure of 185,744 is an increase of 201.6 percent compared to the August 2025 figure of 61,594.The extreme peak in 2020 was likely based on fear that President Trump would not win the presidential election. Such fear proved to be a correct forecast.
This correspondent does not know what the future will bring. Restoring the rights protected by the Second Amendment will probably keep the firearms sales boom going for a while. At some point the boom will stall out. Prudent business men will take down debt and build a cash cushion while the boom lasts.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
