While most retailers had trouble pulling Americans away from their computers to buy holiday gifts on Black Friday, stores selling guns saw no problems. The FBI said today that Black Friday saw a record 185,345 requests for background checks.
That means the FBI processed around two requests per second that day through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, reports The Associated Press. On Black Friday 2014, the FBI received 5 percent fewer requests.
The New York Times notes that this number does not exactly reflect the precise number of guns sold on Black Friday, as around 40 percent of guns are sold by unlicensed small vendors.
According to USA Today, the FBI said that the previous single day record for gun background check requests came on Dec. 21, 2012, the day after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Connecticut. That day, there were 177,170 requests received.
Also on Black Friday, there was a shooting in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which left three people dead. And there is currently an active situation in San Bernardino, California. After the Colorado shootings, President Barack Obama said that tighter gun control laws are needed and that these incidents shouldn’t become normal.
“If we truly care about this — if we're going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience — then we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them. Period,” Obama said Friday. “Enough is enough.”
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