Another month with more than a million NICS checks in the US. [Zac K.] Another month has come and gone, and we’ve got a new set of NICS numbers to check out. And thanks to these figures that come in from the feds, we see July 2026 has an 8.5 percent year-over-year improvement on the previous year’s numbers, when we adjust the numbers with the industry’s input. Keeping track of sales @ TFB: Bad Headlines, More Guns Sold? Sept. NICS Numbers Up January 2021 Shatters NICS Firearm Background Check Record Colt CZ Reports 10% Drop in Firearm Sales Despite Revenue Growth Remington Files Chapter 11 for a Second Time Amid Record Firearms Sales Months What NICS tells usThe NICS numbers come from the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and they are a rough correlation to firearms sales in the U.S.; licensed dealers must check the NICS database before a sale, and when you add up all those queries, you have your NICS numbers for the month.The numbers from the feds aren’t 100 percent accurate, because NICS background checks apply to more than just firearms sales. Some states use them for concealed carry permits or other checks. And some states don’t do NICS checks at all, relying instead on some other system. CCW permits are one of the reasons for NICS checks, which skews the FBI numbers. [Zac K.] The best guess at a true how-many-guns-sold number is to take the adjusted NICS numbers from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF). They take information from member businesses and apply that data to the FBI’s numbers to arrive at a closer guess. July’s numbersThe NSSF’s adjusted numbers show 1,061,883 relevant NICS queries in July of 2026. That’s a rise of 8.5 percent from last July, which was the first time in six years that NICS queries had dropped below a million.As for NFA checks, a new data figure that the NSSF is tracking for us, in July of 2026, Texas had 16,977 NFA checks to lead the U.S. market. Florida was second (9,784 checks), then Virginia (7,599), then North Carolina (5,941). Georgia rounded out the top five with 5,463 NFA checks. The total NFA checks for July in 2026 were 130,013, an increase of 108.8 percent from the year before. So far, 2026 has been a bounce-back year for the industry. [Zac K.] A good year so farAfter Donald Trump was elected president of the U.S. in 2024’s election, many expected a slump in firearms sales afterwards, and indeed, we did see that happen a bit through 2025. Eventually, in July 2025, NICS numbers dropped under a million sales per month, when numbers were adjusted by the NSSF. The numbers so far this year have been a bounce-back, with particularly strong NFA-checked sales.