Virginia saw a new high for gun sales on Black Friday this year, The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported on Wednesday.
The state tallied 3,902 gun transactions on Friday, a 1.2 percent increase over the previous Black Friday record, set in 2012, according to Virginia State Police figures of mandatory criminal-background checks of gun buyers. And according to the Times-Dispatch, Virginia is just days away from breaking last year’s record for an annual gun transactions. As of Monday, the state had processed 431,693 gun transactions in 2013, just 694 shy of the mark set in 2012.
“Seeing a slight increase in gun sales over the Black Friday weekend from 2012 to 2013 is not surprising given the pattern of increasing gun sales we’ve seen over the past six or seven years,” Thomas Baker, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government Affairs, told the Times-Dispatch.
Total firearm sales in Virginia rose 101 percent from 2006 to 2012, according to estimates, although the Times-Dispatch notes that exact sales of firearms are not recorded or reported by the state.
