Gun Sales Up 3.5% in February

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Raw FBI NICS numbers get misread constantly — by media, by anti-gun advocates, and honestly by a lot of gun owners who don't dig into the methodology. This February data is a good example of why the unadjusted headline number is almost useless on its own.

The permit recheck category dropped by roughly 345,000 checks from February 2025 to February 2026—and that single category accounts for more than the entire 302,000-check decline in total background checks.

That's the whole story right there. The "drop" in NICS isn't people putting guns back on the shelf — it's fewer states running permit maintenance through a federal system. Constitutional Carry expansion is doing what it's supposed to do, and it's showing up as a statistical anomaly that gets reported as a market collapse.

There's a credible argument that some left-leaning buyers who used to dismiss the Second Amendment are quietly reconsidering—and showing up at gun stores.

I've heard this conversation at the LGS counter more than once over the last couple years. First-time buyers who don't fit the assumed demographic, asking basic questions, buying a handgun and some range ammo. Whether that's a permanent shift or a temporary reaction to current events, I genuinely don't know — but the foot traffic has been real.

The 108% growth in adjusted sales since 2000 against 22% population growth is the number worth sitting with. That's not a bubble. That's a decades-long baseline trend that keeps moving in one direction regardless of who's in office or what the headlines say.

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If you've been watching the gun store traffic in the Treasure Valley lately — new faces, different types of buyers, anything that seems different from a few years ago — what are you actually seeing on the floor?

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Read the full article in The Handbook → | By Steve Duskett