Year-over-year background checks on gun sales declined sharply in the first full month of Donald Trump’s second term.
An industry analysis of numbers from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) found Americans bought about 120,000 fewer guns in February 2025 than they did in February 2024. The drop from 1,343,478 checks to 1,222,980 represents about a nine-point decline, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF).
That makes last month the second-worst performing February over the last 13 years, with only 2018 seeing fewer gun-sales-related checks.
The sales drop may signal the beginning of another “Trump Slump.” While many gun industry members backed Trump and he is likely to institute reforms they like, his pro-gun reputation among supporters dampens demand based on concerns new federal restrictions could limit which guns they can buy. That’s part of the reason gun sales declined during the first three years of his term, often falling below levels seen during Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s terms.
Trump has also put gun policy on the back burner during the first few weeks of his administration despite moving swiftly and aggressively in many other areas. He didn’t mention gun rights in his first speech to Congress this week, and the White House left guns off its literal priority list. He has even prioritized other concerns over the interests of the firearms industry at times.
For instance, in an apparent effort to tighten export controls, the Trump Administration shut down all export licensing. That freeze hit firearms exporters, who had just finished a months-long pause of some licensing at the tail end of the Biden Administration.
“This is unprecedented,” Larry Keane, NSSF general counsel, told The Reload at the time. “That’s never been done previously when there was a change in administration.”
“This kind of act, I haven’t seen it before with changes in administration,” Johanna Reeves, a lawyer who works with firearms exporters, also told The Reload during the freeze. “I think it’s really kind of nuts what’s going on right now. I mean, it’s nuts!”
Still, Trump may eventually deliver on policy changes the industry wants to see–even repealing the exporting limitations imposed by the Biden Administration. He ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to review executive branch gun policies, especially new gun restrictions imposed by the ATF during Biden’s presidency, and eliminate any she believes conflicts with the Second Amendment. The export freeze also appears to have been lifted.
The Commerce Department did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but both Keane and Reeves confirmed they’d heard the department lifted the licensing pause the day after The Reload published a story on it.
“I am now hearing word that the pause is lifted,” Reeves told The Reload. “Through the grapevine.”
“[Commerce] informed NSSF that the pause has been lifted Back to doing business!” Keane tweeted.
The reprieve should help soothe some nerves in the export segment of the gun industry and prevent a substantial slowdown in the sector. However, the lack of communication for either the freeze or the thaw could create uncertainty about whether another pause could happen. The licensing backlog may still create difficulties, especially if the Trump Administration reduces Commerce Department staffing in a similar way its done with other federal agencies.
“I really have no idea why BIS isn’t communicating on the freeze. It is perplexing. In terms of my thoughts now that it is over, I am concerned over the backlog it created,” Reeves said. “Add on top of that the departures so far and the significant decrease in institutional knowledge, it’s not good for industry.”
The gun sales slowdown during Trump’s first administration led to significant bloat in the market, which caused a number of businesses to falter. However, the gun industry may be better positioned to absorb a demand slowdown this time, having already been through the phenomenon once.
Additionally, Trump’s first term ended with record gun sales. The perfect storm of motivating factors, from the pandemic to George Floyd’s murder and subsequent rioting to the 2020 election, sent demand soaring. Those events combined to create millions of new gun owners, giving American gun companies more opportunities to sell firearms and ammo to more people on a more consistent basis.
Mark Oliva, an NSSF spokesperson, pointed to the bright side of the February NICS report. He noted that even in a down month, Americans still bought more than a million guns.
“Consistently, month-after-month, over 1 million Americans choose to freely approach the gun counter to purchase a firearm,” he said in a statement. “February’s NSSF-Adjusted NICS figure of over 1.2 million background checks for the sale of a firearm at retail is indicative of the continued desire of Americans from all walks of life enter into lawful and responsible firearm ownership.”
The numbers aren’t perfect, of course. By federal law, the United States has no national gun registry. So, there is no way to track every gun sold.
However, federal law requires licensed dealers to conduct a NICS check on all the guns they sell to customers. Additionally, only licensed dealers can sell new guns. Nineteen states also require all gun sales, even used sales on the secondary market, to be processed through licensed dealers.
NSSF’s analysis of NICS checks breaks out NICS checks related to gun sales from all other kinds of checks done through the system. That provides a more reliable indicator of gun sales than the raw number of NICS checks since many states use NICS checks in their gun-carry permitting processes, and some even re-check hundreds of thousands of permittees every month.
Still, most states don’t require used gun sales between private parties to go through a licensed dealer and, by extension, a NICS check. 24 states also allow those with a qualifying permit, such as a concealed carry permit, to buy guns without going through a subsequent NICS check. So, even the NSSF numbers aren’t a direct one-to-one representation of how many guns are sold in a given period, even if they represent the closest analog.
