I've been noodling around, looking for state and local measures of firearms ownership. There are polling results from BRFSS, Gallup, etc. There are hunting license data. And here, are instnat background checks for firearms transfers. A couple of caveats right off the bat: Not every background check results in the purchase of a firearm. And multiple firearms can be transferred on a single background check. And, the scope of situations where a background check is required has expanded over the years.
Even given those caveats, it is clear that there are annual patterns, with a small spike in the Spring, and a larger spike in the Fall, in most years. There is also clearly a huge increase over time, which would be hard to explain by any expansion of circumstances where a background check is required (although that's certainly part of the picture). And, there are clearly spikes well above the annual cycle and the overall trend, including the Fall of 2008 to Spring of 2008, Fall of 2012 to early 2013, the Fall of 2016 to Spring of 2017, and from Spring 2020 to the end of 2021.
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