In the days following the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., the Florida Department of Law Enforcement fielded an unusually high number of background check request for new gun buyers, The Tampa Bay Times reported on Friday:
On Friday — the day of the shootings — the FDLE took 4,805 background check requests, the highest number of any day in December up to that point and more than any day in December 2011.
On Saturday, the FDLE took 6,945 requests, a 44 percent increase from the previous Saturday. On Sunday — typically a slower day for gun sales — 3,171 background checks were requested compared to 2,155 the previous Sunday.
And on Monday and Tuesday, the most recent days for which data was available, the trend continued, with 5,735 checks on Monday, nearly double a week earlier; and a whopping 7,105 checks on Tuesday — a 135 percent increase over the previous Tuesday.
In December 2011, daily background checks eclipsed 4,000 only once.
