Pennsylvania firearms background checks shatter record in 4th quarter 2020
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Word that Pennsylvania State Police saw a record surge in firearm license background checks in 2020 didn’t surprise Mark Boerio, owner of Latrobe’s Army Navy & Indoor Pistol Range.
Business soared last year — and has continued into 2021, he said.
“It’s the same everywhere,” Boerio said. “First you had covid-19, then all of the riots last summer, then the election and then the election outcome. … It’s been one thing after another. And it’s all politics still driving the sales.”
State police reported that October through December 2020 was the busiest quarter in the 22-year history of Pennsylvania’s Instant Check System, or PICS, with the agency performing 420,581 background checks. The previous record — 406,151 checks — was set the previous quarter, July through September.
Prior to the back-to-back records set in the last two quarters, the record had been 369,807 — which had stood since the first quarter of 2013, according to state police.
“Our department is proud of PICS and the men and women behind the system who worked hard to meet record-setting demand throughout 2020,” said Captain Mark Shaver, assistant director of the Pennsylvania State Police Bureau of Records and Identification. “For the year, we saw a 47% increase in PICS requests from 2019, and the team stepped up to answer the call during a global pandemic.”
Debbie Schultz, an Apollo gun shop owner for more than five decades, says she has never seen demand for firearms as high as it is now.
“There has never been anything like this in my 52 years in the business,” said Schultz, who owns Schultz’s Sportsmen’s Stop.
She said her business began soaring in April, adding, “It’s continued ever since. It never let up.”
The agency said for the entire year, some 1.44 million checks were initiated versus 982,032 reported in 2019.
Established in 1998, PICS is used by county sheriffs, the Philadelphia police chief and licensed firearms dealers in Pennsylvania to determine a person’s legal ability to acquire a license to carry firearms or obtain a firearm through a purchase or transfer.
State police also released the number of firearms-purchase denials, subsequent investigations and arrests resulting from such investigations for October through December 2020.
Last year during the fourth quarter, the system denied permits for 7,458 people versus 4,106 the same period in 2019. Of those denials in late 2020, 1,317 were referred to law enforcement agencies for further investigation, up from 1,155 during the same period the prior year. Police arrested 52 on warrants — which are checked during the PICS process — as they attempted to buy firearms the final quarter of last year, versus 42 during the final three months of 2019.
State police will release a full annual report for 2020 later this year.
Nationally, there were a record 21 million background checks for firearms sales in 2020 through the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, reported the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The trade association said that was a 60% increase over 2019 and a pace that through the end of October had already topped the previous record of 15.7 million checks, set in 2016.
Some 8.4 million people nationwide, accounting for 40% of all gun purchases last year, bought a firearm for the first time, the trade group estimated.
Boerio said he doesn’t see business slowing down anytime soon.
“Now, you have the impeachment going on. It’s all being driven by politics,” he said.
Staff writer Paula Reed Ward contributed.