October NICS Checks Fell 5.2%, and Kentucky Is Why

Last updated November 2026 · By Nick Hall, who pulls the FBI’s NICS tables apart column by column every month before anyone calls them sales

Quick take: The FBI ran 2,221,553 NICS background checks in October 2026, 5.2 percent fewer than in October 2025. One state’s permit recheck cycle explains more than all of that drop. NSSF’s adjusted count, which strips permit checks out, rose 7.9 percent, though none of these numbers is a count of guns sold.

• Headline total: 2,221,553 checks in October 2026 against 2,344,310 in October 2025, the lowest October in the FBI’s table since 2019.
• The Kentucky swing: Kentucky logged 31,007 checks this October against 297,083 a year ago, a fall of 266,076 that outweighs the whole national decline.
• NSSF-adjusted: NSSF puts October 2026 at 1,402,422, up 7.9 percent from its October 2025 figure of 1,299,312.
• The odd column: The FBI’s Other column, the home of firearms that are neither handguns nor long guns, logged 173,041 checks, 2.8 times its third-quarter monthly pace.

A 5.2 percent drop sounds like a soft month at the gun counter. It wasn’t. I pulled the FBI’s three NICS tables and NSSF’s release, did the subtraction, and the October story is a Kentucky paperwork cycle plus a column that hasn’t moved like this all year.

Table of Contents

What the October NICS Checks Number Counts

The headline comes from the FBI’s month-by-month NICS table, updated through October 31, 2026. October shows 2,221,553 checks. October 2025 was 2,344,310, so the fall is 122,757 checks, or 5.2 percent.

That is the lowest October in the table since 2019’s 2,086,895. Against September it is a jump: September 2026 logged 2,000,629, so October came in 220,924 higher, up 11.0 percent on the month.

The year is close to flat. January through October 2026 adds up to 21,652,247 checks, against 21,733,375 in the same ten months of 2025, a dip of 0.4 percent.

None of that is a sales figure, and the FBI prints the warning on its own tables: “They do not represent the number of firearms sold.” A permit check, a permit recheck and a pawn redemption all count the same as a dealer sale in the headline.

The Kentucky Hole in the State Table

The FBI’s second table, checks by state and month, has 55 rows: the 50 states, Washington DC and four territories. In October they add up to 2,104,063, down 8.1 percent from 2,289,774 a year earlier. That is a fall of 185,711.

Kentucky accounts for all of it and then some. The state logged 297,083 checks in October 2025 and 31,007 in October 2026, a drop of 266,076. Take Kentucky out and the other 54 rows rose 4.0 percent, from 1,992,691 to 2,073,056.

Kentucky’s count is a permit cycle, not a buying cycle. In 2025 the FBI’s type table put 2,249,980 of Kentucky’s 2,522,704 checks in the Permit Recheck column, 89.2 percent of the state’s total. Its monthly count ran near 300,000 most of last year, then fell to 23,907 in August 2025 and 25,322 in September before jumping back to 297,083 in October.

This October Kentucky logged just 2,931 permit rechecks. Its big months in 2026 were January, at 291,317 checks, and July, at 272,859.

Illinois is the other permit giant. It led the country again with 213,360 checks, and 166,795 of them, 78.2 percent, were permit rechecks. Texas was second at 169,586, up 15.1 percent, then Florida at 122,508, California at 116,855 and Pennsylvania at 97,287. Across the table 33 rows rose and 22 fell.

In September the story was checks that sat in no state’s row, which was the angle of our September NICS report. In October that unassigned slice shrank to 117,490, the smallest of any month in 2026.

NSSF’s Adjusted October Count Goes the Other Way

NSSF, the firearm industry trade group, released its own October figure on November 4. In its words: “The October 2026 NSSF-adjusted National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) figure of 1,402,422 is an increase of 7.9 percent compared to the October 2025 NSSF-adjusted NICS figure of 1,299,312.”

The method is in the release. NSSF says its adjusted data “were derived by subtracting out NICS purpose code permit checks and permit rechecks used by states for CCW permit application checks as well as checks on active CCW permit databases.”

NSSF also prints an unadjusted figure of 2,104,063, and that is not the FBI headline. It is the sum of the 55 rows in the FBI’s state table, to the check. NSSF’s October 2025 comparison of 2,289,774 is the same table’s October 2025 sum, not the 2,344,310 in the national table.

I ran the subtraction on the FBI’s own type table to see if it holds. The state table’s 2,104,063, less 355,846 permit checks and 345,795 permit rechecks, leaves 1,402,422. NSSF’s adjusted number, exactly.

NSSF’s top five states for adjusted checks were Texas, Florida, California, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The trade group is careful with its own number, too: “Though not a direct correlation to firearms sales, the NSSF-adjusted NICS data provide an additional picture of current market conditions.”

The FBI’s Other Column Nearly Triples After October 9

The FBI’s year-to-date table by state and type now runs through October 31. Subtract the January to September edition, which I downloaded on October 3, and you get October on its own. Every state total from January to September matched between the two, so the difference is October and nothing else.

The Other column logged 173,041 checks in October. In the third quarter it averaged 62,455 a month, and in the first half 54,270. Texas went from a third-quarter pace of 7,798 a month to 26,621, Florida from 5,977 to 21,045, and 28 of the 55 rows more than doubled their third-quarter monthly pace.

The FBI defines Other as “frames, receivers, and other firearms that are neither handguns nor long guns,” and its note sets the column apart from “traditional checks tied to the National Firearms Act.” ATF tells dealers to process suppressor sales as they would any other statutory firearm, and a suppressor is neither a handgun nor a long gun.

And October 9 is the day ATF stopped requiring its approval before a suppressor changes hands. Its FAQ on the change spells out what a dealer does instead: “Before transferring such items to an unlicensed person, FFLs must obtain a Form 4473 and, unless otherwise exempt, perform a NICS background check.” ATF’s new NFA guidance covers suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns and AOWs, for everyone.

The FBI’s tables do not say what was in those 173,041 checks, and there is still no NFA column in any of them. But a column that averaged under 63,000 a month all year nearly tripled in the month suppressors moved to the 4473, while the unassigned slice of the national total hit its low for the year, and I’d want a very good alternative explanation before I believed that was coincidence.

Long Guns Wake Up for Hunting Season

The rest of the type table looks like October. Long gun checks came in at 482,483, 27.5 percent above the third-quarter monthly pace of 378,410. Handguns rose less, to 613,500 from a 561,781 pace, up 9.2 percent.

Texas led both columns with 59,594 handgun checks and 39,053 long gun checks. Checks covering more than one type of firearm in a single check hit 42,212, against a third-quarter pace of 25,279.

Permits are still a third of the state table. October’s 355,846 permit checks and 345,795 rechecks add up to 701,641, 33.3 percent of the 2,104,063 total. Illinois, Utah, Minnesota and Indiana logged 79.8 percent of the rechecks between them.

Fewer checks than last October. More checks that look like a sale. That’s October.

---

Frequently Asked Questions

---

Related Reading

• September NICS Checks Top 2 Million as State Counts Dip
• NFA Background Checks Tripled in August
• SkipForm4.com Screens Suppressor Sales That Skip the Form 4
• Q3 Gun Sales Fell 7.8% While Suppressor Sales Nearly Tripled
• DOJ Lets Gun Dealers Run NICS Checks on Their Own Staff
• Suppressor Laws by State: Where Silencers Are Legal