U.S. Firearm Background Checks Declined for Fifth Straight Year in 2025

The leading measure of gun ownership across the United States dropped for a fifth consecutive year in 2025, a sustained downturn unmatched this century.

Amid an ongoing, polarizing gun debate in America, the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) — the nation’s primary mechanism for vetting weapon purchases — processed 25.05 million firearm background checks last year.

That figure represented a 6.7 percent dip compared to 2024’s 26.8 million, continuing a pattern that has pushed the number of firearm background checks down 36 percent from a record-high 39.3 million in 2020. This marked the first time checks have declined for five straight years since at least 2000.

“Lots of things affect firearm sales,” said Daniel Webster, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and an expert on firearm policy and the prevention of gun violence. “Political environment, new restrictive gun laws being debated or signed into law can cause a pre-law spike, violence, confidence in police, violence carried out against people based on their race, ethnicity or gender identity,” Webster said. “Reductions in violent crime, no hint of any new gun restrictions under this Congress and White House, and the fact that many had already armed themselves have led to reduced demand for guns.”

It is important to note that firearm background check totals do not equate to actual gun sales, as purchase records are not public information. Indeed, according to a 2017 study, “22 percent of gun owners who reported obtaining their most recent firearm within the previous two years reported doing so without a background check.”

Nevertheless, the data offers one of the clearest indicators of broader trends in gun buying.

Pandemic Ascend, Post-Pandemic Descend

From 2019 (roughly 28 million) to 2020, there was a staggering 40.4 percent increase in firearm background checks, constituting, by far, the largest annual change in checks in the 21st century.

“Gun sales surged during the pandemic for several reasons,” said Timothy Lytton, a professor at the Georgia State University College of Law and an expert on gun control. “One reason was fears about civil disorder due to the lack of responsiveness of emergency and police services, which led some first-time gun buyers to purchase weapons for self-protection,” Lytton said. “Another reason was fears about government tyranny due to the imposition of sweeping and restricting public-health mandates, which led some longtime gun owners to purchase more weapons as a way to affirm their commitment to the Second Amendment.”

According to a 2022 study based on the 2021 National Firearms Survey, between January 1, 2019, and April 26, 2021, 2.9 percent of U.S. adults, or 7.5 million, became new gun owners. Of those, 5.4 million had never lived in a home with a weapon, consequently exposing, in addition to themselves, more than 11 million people to household firearms, including over five million children. The study found that approximately half of all new gun owners were female, and that 40 percent were Black or Hispanic. Conversely, of the weapon purchasers within that timeframe who were not new gun owners, 70 percent were male and 74 percent were White.

By 2024, firearm background checks had already fallen to pre-pandemic levels. The swift decrease had much to do with a steep falloff between 2021 and 2022, when background checks plunged from 38.5 million to 30.8 million — a 20.1 percent decline.

National Pattern, Regional Differences

Since 2020, 48 of 50 states have seen decreases in firearm background checks, with only Maryland and North Dakota deviating from the national trend. Moreover, the number of checks in 35 states declined last year compared to 2024.

Of those 35 states, 24 are among the top 30 states with the most firearm background checks this century. Additionally, eight are within the top 10. Texas (3rd) and Tennessee (9th) are the exceptions.

While Kentucky and Illinois sit noticeably apart from the rest of the country with over 50 million firearm background checks apiece since 2000 — tens of millions more than third-place Texas — their outlier status stems from a caveat. In an email, an FBI spokesperson wrote that “Kentucky and Illinois query NICS more for firearm permit rechecks than other states.”

Even so, they are located in the South and the Midwest of America, respectively. Those two regions have historically dominated firearm background checks, accounting for 15 of the 20 states with the most background checks in the 21st century. California (4th), Pennsylvania (6th), Utah (15th), Washington (16th) and Colorado (19th) serve as the anomalies.

“There are two major factors that are related to the prevalence of gun ownership,” said Michael Siegel, a professor at the Tufts University School of Medicine and an expert on firearm violence. “One is the historical nature of that particular state or region, and the second is hunting. In terms of history, there is a very strong association between states in the South and firearm ownership. The most logical explanation of this is the history of slavery, and the fact that in those states, they needed weapons to enforce slavery. Similarly, in the Jim Crow era, violence was used to suppress Black loathing,” Siegel said. “The second factor, states that have more rural areas tend to be states that have more hunting. That’s why you see higher gun ownership in those states. The two places where gun ownership is higher are the South and very rural states. In some Midwest states, there is a hunting culture. Northern Wisconsin, northern Minnesota.”

Seasonal Fluctuations

Firearm background checks spike during certain periods of the year. 

A month-by-month breakdown from 2000 to 2025 reveals that March, November and December routinely outpace the rest of the calendar. Altogether, this century, those three months averaged 49.9 million checks, roughly 10 million more than the other nine months compiled.

December, in particular, towers above the rest. Since 2000, it has been the busiest month for firearm background checks, with 53.7 million. According to a 2020 study, the holiday season is the driving force behind that surge, as “guns are a popular gift during the holidays, particularly among children.”

As for March, its placement is slightly skewed by the pandemic and federal government intervention. In March 2020 — when President Donald Trump declared a national emergency as diagnosed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. exceeded a thousand — there were 3.7 million firearm background checks, the fifth-highest monthly total this century, trailing only March 2021 (4.6 million), January 2021 (4.3 million), June 2020 (3.9 million) and December 2020 (3.9 million).

In March 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021 and the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2021, which would have required firearm background checks for all weapon sales and transfers and extended the review period for checks to 10 days, respectively. While neither bill ultimately became law, their passage in the House signaled a potential tightening of federal gun laws.

Firearm Background Checks, Gun Violence

The 1993 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act mandated the creation of the NICS — formally launched by the FBI in 1998 — to prevent firearm sales to people prohibited under the Gun Control Act of 1968. After a pair of amendments — first in the Brady Act and then in the 1994 Violence Against Women Act — that list includes felons, fugitives, unlawful drug users, the intellectually disabled, non-citizens, Armed Forces dishonorable dischargees and those subject to a restraining order or convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.

Still, more than three decades later, there were 38,823 gun violence deaths and 26,314 gun violence injuries in the U.S. in 2025, according to the Gun Violence Archive, an independent, nonprofit organization that tracks and publishes detailed data on gun violence incidents across the country. However, as Webster alluded to, those numbers are actually a cutback from 2021 — following the pandemic-stricken 2020 — with 47,787 and 40,693, respectively.

In 2025, the Gun Violence Archive also recorded 407 mass shootings, which it classifies as “a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may have been killed or injured in the incident.” As with gun violence deaths and injuries, that figure is an improvement from 2021, when 690 mass shootings occurred. 

Since the Gun Violence Archive began tracking gun violence incidents in 2014, 2021 holds the most deaths, injuries and mass shootings. Over the last five years, the most significant piece of legislation aimed at reducing gun violence was the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. This bill expanded firearm background checks for weapon purchasers under 21, clarified who qualifies as a licensed gun dealer, allocated funds to implement crisis prevention programs, made it a federal crime to traffic illegal firearms into the U.S. and closed the “boyfriend loophole” — a gap in American gun legislation that allowed physically abusive former romantic partners and stalkers to access weapons, as, while individuals who have been convicted of, or are under a restraining order for, domestic violence are prohibited from owning a firearm, the ban had only applied if the victim was the perpetrator’s spouse or cohabitant, or if they shared a child.