FBI Figures Show Crime Fell as Americans Stocked Up on Guns in 2023

FBI figures reported by NBC News on March 19, 2024, show that crime fell during 2023, a year in which there were over one million background checks a month for gun purchases.

On July 4, 2023, the Washington Examiner noted National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) checks for gun purchases have been over a million a month for 47 straight months.

On March 19, 2024, Breitbart News spoke with National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Mark Oliva and he said it has now been 55 consecutive months of one million-plus NICS checks.

This means, leading up to 2023 and throughout 2023, Americans were pouring into gun stores to acquire firearms, yet “fourth-quarter numbers” reported by NBC News showed “a 13% decline in murder in 2023 from 2022, a 6% decline in reported violent crime and a 4% decline in reported property crime.”

Former CIA analyst Jeff Asher commented on the lower crime figures, saying, “It suggests that when we get the final data in October, we will have seen likely the largest one-year decline in murder that has ever been recorded.”

There was a similar situation after gun sales surged in 2013. Breitbart News pointed out that private gun sales skyrocketed during 2013 with 21,093,273 background checks, and, according to the FBI, “offenses” in the categories of violent crimes and property crimes decreased during the first six months of 2014.

On a broader scale, Breitbart News observed a 2012 Congressional Research Service study showing gun ownership jumped from 192 million privately owned guns in 1994 to 309 million in 2009. At the same time, the “firearm-related murder and non-negligent homicide” of 6.6 per 100,000 Americans in 1993 fell to 3.6 per 100,000 in 2000 and as far as 3.2 per 100,000 in 2011.