Black Friday: Biggest gun-buying day in history

The FBI handled a record-setting number of background checks related to firearm sales on Black Friday.

The National Instant Criminal Background Check System processes FBI gun-related background checks, ABC News reported, adding that this year on Black Friday, the agency processed 185,345 background checks — two per second — surpassing the previous record set on Dec. 21, 2012, two weeks after the Sandy Hook Elementary mass shooting in Connecticut.

“This was an approximate 5 percent increase over the 175,754 [background check requests] received on Black Friday 2014,” Stephen Fischer, the FBI’s chief of multimedia productions, was quoted by USA Today.

The Black Friday record-setting sales came the same day as the mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs that killed three people and injured nine others, USA Today added.

“Enough is enough,” President Obama said in a statement quoted by ABC, which added that the president said the Colorado Springs shootings show that the nation needs “to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war” for “people who have no business wielding them.”

Reports have stated that new buyers in the gun market include women, millennials and those who own assault rifles to make a political point, the Washington Post reported, adding that gun-control commentatorRobert J. Spitzer stated in June: “The very purchase of guns, and especially assault weapons, is a statement that they should remain legal and unregulated, that guns themselves are not the problem. It’s also a way to express opposition to Obama. Within the gun industry, this pattern is called ‘political sales.’”

Since background checks were implemented in 1998, more than 220 million have been processed, with just 1.2 million background checks denied approval by the NICS system, the Washington Post added.