If you're a gun owner, in general, these are not the most stressful of times.
I said in general.
If you live in most of America, especially the vast expanse of Red America, gun rights are doing pretty well - a complete turnaround from the dark days of the '70s and '80s, when gun control was a solid majority view in most of the nation.
Which is good news and bad news.
The bad news part? While gun owners are great on defense, punching way above their weight when fighting back against Big Left's gun control machine, we tend to let things slide when we get ahead, giving anti-gunners time and space to regroup.
With that in mind, if you follow the money - or the sales, as the case may be - you can get a pretty good idea of where the anxiety is.
Nationwide?
People are definitely buying guns:
The FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System processed more than 165,000 firearms-related background checks on Black Friday—with the FBI providing responses on 94% of federal background checks in mere minutes. This critical work protects Americans' Second Amendment… pic.twitter.com/qPAtI4Y1hr
— FBI Jacksonville (@FBIJacksonville) December 3, 2025
But after two decades where every surge in anxiety - Democrat wins, pandemics, riots - led to increasingly massive surges in purchases, things are apparently reverting ot the mean nationwide:
[The National Shooting Sports Federation] revealed that the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) completed 530,156 background checks related to firearms for the week leading up to, and including, “Black Friday,” one of the busiest shopping days of the year. That figure is down from 2024’s total of 613,380 for the same time period. The 2025 total is a 13.6 percent decrease from the 2024 figure.
NICS completed 165,183 background checks on “Black Friday” alone. The figure approximates firearm sales at retail on that day, although it also includes background checks for other purposes related to firearms such as approvals for concealed carry permits. NSSF will later this week release its adjusted NICS figures for November reflecting only those background checks related to the sale of a firearm at retail.
So sales are down from "feverishly high" to "strong".
But there are exceptions. And those exceptions have one thing in common.
Gun sales are surging in New York City ahead of anti-cop, anti-semite Zohran Mamdani taking office...
Schmear & Wesson: Jewish New Yorkers rushing to buy guns after Mamdani victory https://t.co/8hQpRRoJKh pic.twitter.com/Q2NoIOQgTl
— New York Post (@nypost) November 15, 2025
...which you already knew if you read this space.
They're also surging in Virginia, where Governor-Elect Spanberger is doing her bit to pump up the portfolios of anyone owning Sturm Ruger stock:
Gun Sales Surge in Virginia Ahead of Democrat Takeoverhttps://t.co/2JQNtHOEJ4
— Bearing Arms (@BearingArmsCom) December 3, 2025
Virginians are joining New Yorkers in line at the gun shop:
[Virginia] was among the top five across the country for both NICS checks in general and NICS checks on the transfer of long guns; a surge NSSF's Mark Oliva attributes to concerns about a sweeping semi-auto ban coming as soon as the Democrats take complete control of state government next month.
In a pattern we've seen in other purple states taken over by Democrats - Colorado, Washington, Minnesota, Michigan - the gun control proposals come "as a complete surprise", until the Dems with the elections. So, too, in Virginia:
The Democrats' strategy of delaying the introduction of their gun control plans has largely kept the issue out of the media, and may have even given some gun owners a false sense of security. There's a wave of 2A infringement heading their way, however, and groups like the Virginia Citizens Defense League have been rallying their members to contact their local county supervisors, city councils, sheriffs, and Commonwealth's Attorneys and urge them to stand firm against the impending attacks on our Second Amendment rights.
The lesson is clear - gun owners and the groups that support them need to do as well on offense as they do when they feel their backs are up against the wall.
It's not like the bad guys are going away.
