NICS Firearm Background Checks
Every month the FBI reports how many firearm background checks ran through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, broken out by purpose and by state. This page publishes that series as machine-readable data: 333 months from November 1998 to July 2026, across 55 reporting jurisdictions.
A background check is not a firearm sale. The section below explains what the raw total does and does not count, and publishes a narrower purchase-intent series with its formula.
- 2,057,967
- total checks in July 2026
- +6.3%
- vs July 2025
- 24,094,979
- checks in the trailing 12 months
Read this first
NICS checks are not gun sales
The FBI states it plainly on every monthly report: “These statistics represent the number of firearm background checks initiated through the NICS. They do not represent the number of firearms sold. Based on varying state laws and purchase scenarios, a one-to-one correlation cannot be made between a firearm background check and a firearm sale.”
Four things break the correlation in both directions. Concealed-carry permit applications and permit rechecks run through NICS without any firearm changing hands, and a handful of states re-run their entire active permit database every month. A single check can cover several firearms bought in one transaction. Pawn redemptions, rentals, and returns each have their own purpose code. And in many states a private sale between two individuals requires no check at all, so those transfers never appear here.
In July 2026, permit issuance and permit rechecks accounted for 996,084 checks, or 48.4% of the national total. Kentucky alone reported 254,908 permit and permit-recheck checks against 15,795 purchase-intent checks, which is why reading a state ranking as a sales ranking produces nonsense.
The clearest evidence is in the series itself. The record month for all checks is March 2021 at 4,645,609, but the record month for purchase-intent checks is March 2020 at 2,287,207. Those are different months because they measure different things.
Derived series
Purchase-intent checks
To track transfer activity rather than permit paperwork, we publish a second series built only from the purpose codes a licensed dealer runs to transfer a firearm. The formula is handgun + long_gun + other + multiple, using the FBI's own column names. It excludes permits, permit rechecks, pawn, rental, return, and administrative traffic.
This is our derived metric, not an FBI statistic, and it is not the NSSF-adjusted figure. NSSF publishes its own proprietary adjustment; because the method is not open, we do not republish or approximate it. Ours is arithmetic you can reproduce from the columns in the download.
| Series | July 2026 | Year over year | Trailing 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| All checksEvery purpose code, including permits and permit rechecks | 2,057,967 | +6.3% | 24,094,979 |
| Purchase-intent checkshandgun + long_gun + other + multiple | 978,683 | +8.5% | 13,938,823 |
| Permits and permit rechecksPermit issuance and monthly rechecks of active permit databases | 996,084 | — | — |
Handgun
563,433
Long gun
337,477
Other
50,826
Multiple
26,947
“Other” covers frames, receivers, and firearms that are neither handgun nor long gun. “Multiple” is a single check covering more than one handgun or long gun in one transaction, which is one more reason check counts undercount firearms transferred.
Charts
The monthly series
Both charts are standalone SVGs with their source line built in. Hotlink them or save a copy; the reuse terms are below.
By jurisdiction
Top 15 jurisdictions in July 2026
Ranked by total checks, with the purchase-intent and permit columns beside them. A state near the top of the total column with a small purchase-intent column is running permit rechecks, not selling more firearms. All 55 jurisdictions are in the download.
| Jurisdiction | All checks | Purchase intent | Permits and rechecks | Permit share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kentucky | 272,859 | 15,795 | 254,908 | 93.4% |
| Illinois | 249,475 | 28,508 | 220,967 | 88.6% |
| Texas | 121,659 | 83,562 | 28,228 | 23.2% |
| California | 113,024 | 46,538 | 49,075 | 43.4% |
| Florida | 88,265 | 72,475 | 8,300 | 9.4% |
| Colorado | 87,628 | 81,716 | 5,525 | 6.3% |
| Pennsylvania | 82,856 | 50,039 | 31,634 | 38.2% |
| Utah | 72,109 | 8,825 | 62,463 | 86.6% |
| Minnesota | 56,120 | 16,818 | 38,751 | 69.1% |
| Indiana | 54,464 | 27,694 | 25,617 | 47.0% |
| Tennessee | 53,503 | 35,011 | 17,020 | 31.8% |
| North Carolina | 53,192 | 30,937 | 17,569 | 33.0% |
| Wisconsin | 48,948 | 22,222 | 26,184 | 53.5% |
| Michigan | 45,435 | 16,241 | 28,264 | 62.2% |
| Ohio | 45,243 | 33,120 | 9,690 | 21.4% |
Methodology
How this dataset is built
The FBI publishes NICS statistics only as PDF tables, in this case NICS Firearm Checks: Month/Year by State/Type. We ingest the machine-readable conversion of that report maintained by the Data Liberation Project, a project that began at BuzzFeed News in 2015 and moved to the Data Liberation Project in April 2024. Our snapshot pins the exact upstream revision: commit 091bd34e01, retrieved 2026-08-15.
National monthly figures are the sum of every reporting jurisdiction's purpose-code counts for that month. The ingest refuses to publish if the upstream column list changes, if any month is missing, if the jurisdiction count varies between months, or if a jurisdiction's reported row total disagrees with the sum of its own purpose codes. Every published month passed all four checks.
Note for anyone reconciling against the FBI directly: the FBI publishes more than one NICS table, and their national figures do not match exactly. The month/year summary table runs somewhat higher than the sum of the month/year-by-state table. We publish the by-state sum, because it is the one that decomposes by jurisdiction and purpose code. Compare like with like when citing.
The full national series covers November 1998 onward. Per-state monthly totals are published for the trailing 60 months, plus the complete per-state breakdown for July 2026. Every value is a whole check count; nothing is smoothed, seasonally adjusted, or estimated.
The FBI occasionally revises earlier months. This dataset reflects the upstream file as of the retrieval date rather than freezing prior publications, so a restated month will change here too.
Citation and reuse
Built to be cited
Cite this edition as Rifle Configurator, NICS Background Check Data, July 2026 edition, with a link to this page. The underlying counts are US government statistics; our contribution is the validated compilation, the purchase-intent series, and the charts. Please carry the source link and credit the FBI as the originating agency.
Charts may be reused in commercial and non-commercial work with the built-in source line intact.
Questions
Common questions about NICS data
- Do NICS background checks equal gun sales?
- No. The FBI states that its NICS statistics do not represent the number of firearms sold, and that no one-to-one correlation can be made between a check and a sale. Permit applications and permit rechecks run through NICS without a firearm changing hands, one check can cover several firearms in a single transaction, and private sales in many states require no check at all. In July 2026, 48.4% of all NICS checks were permit issuance or permit rechecks rather than transfers.
- How many NICS background checks were there in July 2026?
- The FBI reported 2,057,967 total NICS background checks in July 2026 across 55 reporting jurisdictions. Of those, 978,683 were purchase-intent checks: the handgun, long gun, other, and multiple purpose codes that a dealer runs to transfer a firearm.
- Are firearm background checks up or down compared with a year ago?
- Total NICS checks in July 2026 were +6.3% against July 2025, moving from 1,936,621 to 2,057,967. Purchase-intent checks, which strip out permit traffic, were +8.5% over the same period. The two can move in opposite directions when a state runs a large permit-recheck batch, so compare the same series across months.
- What is the purchase-intent series and how is it calculated?
- It is our derived metric, calculated as handgun + long_gun + other + multiple using the FBI's own column names. It counts only the purpose codes tied to transferring a firearm through a licensed dealer, and excludes permits, permit rechecks, pawn, rental, return, and administrative checks. It is not the NSSF-adjusted figure, whose method is proprietary and which we do not republish.
- Which month had the most NICS background checks ever?
- March 2021 holds the record for total checks at 4,645,609. The record for purchase-intent checks falls in a different month, March 2020 at 2,287,207, because the two series measure different activity.
- Why do some states report far more checks than their population suggests?
- A few states re-run background checks against their entire active concealed-carry permit database every month. Those rechecks are counted as NICS checks, so those states post very large totals that have nothing to do with firearms being transferred. The per-state table on this page separates permit and recheck volume from purchase-intent volume so the distortion is visible.
- Where does this data come from and how often does it update?
- The FBI publishes NICS statistics as PDF tables. This dataset ingests the Data Liberation Project's parsed conversion of the FBI's month/year-by-state report, validates it, and republishes it as JSON and CSV. The FBI releases the previous month's figures in the first days of each month, and this page refreshes monthly. The current snapshot covers November 1998 through July 2026.