September NICS Checks Top 2 Million as State Counts Dip

Last updated October 2026 · By Nick Hall, who reads the FBI’s NICS tables row by row every month so the headline number doesn’t pass for a sales figure

Quick take: The FBI ran 2,000,629 NICS background checks in September 2026, up 3.6 percent from September 2025. But the FBI’s own state-by-state table adds up to 1,843,700, which is 0.8 percent lower than a year ago. The whole increase sits in checks that aren’t assigned to any state, and none of it is a count of guns sold.

• Headline total: 2,000,629 checks in September 2026 against 1,931,173 in September 2025, a 3.6 percent rise, and 5.2 percent below August’s 2,111,146.
• State table: The 55 state and territory rows add up to 1,843,700, down 0.8 percent from 1,858,763 a year earlier.
• The gap: 156,929 checks sit in the national total but in no state’s row, more than double the 72,410 of September 2025.
• Where it happened: Illinois led with 231,920 checks, followed by Texas at 133,852, California at 113,008 and Florida at 101,967.

In August the FBI’s two tables disagreed by 193,767 checks. In September the disagreement is the whole story. I pulled the national table, the state table and the type table straight from the FBI so you don’t have to. Here’s what’s actually in them.

Table of Contents

What the September NICS Checks Number Counts

The headline comes from the FBI’s month-by-month NICS table. September 2026 shows 2,000,629 checks. September 2025 was 1,931,173, so the rise is 69,456 checks, or 3.6 percent.

Against August it is a drop. August 2026 came in at 2,111,146, which leaves September 110,517 lower, or 5.2 percent down on the month.

Over the year the total is flat. January through September 2026 adds up to 19,430,694 checks, against 19,389,065 in the same nine months of 2025. That is a gain of 41,629, or 0.2 percent.

None of those are sales figures, and the FBI says so on the table itself: “They do not represent the number of firearms sold.” The same note says “a one-to-one correlation cannot be made between a firearm background check and a firearm sale.”

The figure the industry prefers is the NSSF-adjusted one, which the trade group publishes as its count of checks for firearm sales. NSSF had not posted a September figure as of October 2, so everything here is the FBI’s raw data.

Read the Two FBI Tables Separately

But the FBI publishes a second table, checks by state and month, and it doesn’t agree with the first. Add up all 55 rows, the 50 states plus Washington DC and four territories, and September comes to 1,843,700.

A year ago the same rows added up to 1,858,763. So the state table is down 15,063 checks, or 0.8 percent, in a month when the headline rose 3.6 percent. It is also 3.8 percent under August’s 1,917,379, the raw total in our August NFA report.

The difference between the two tables is 156,929 checks. Those are in the national total and in nobody’s row. Not one state.

In September 2025 that gap was 72,410. It grew by 84,519 while the headline grew by 69,456, so more than all of the increase came from outside the state table.

The FBI’s public tables do not label those checks, but they do show the timing: the gap ran between 54,536 and 104,845 a month through 2025, then jumped to 214,846 in January 2026, the month the $200 NFA tax on suppressors, short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns went to $0, and it hasn’t been below 136,396 in any month since.

August’s gap was 193,767, against 68,438 in August 2025.

Illinois Leads, and It Is Mostly Permit Rechecks

Illinois logged 231,920 checks in September, more than any other state and 27.8 percent above its 181,505 of a year ago. Texas followed at 133,852, then California at 113,008, Florida at 101,967 and Pennsylvania at 84,811. Those five are 36.1 percent of the state table.

Illinois is a permit story. The FBI’s year-to-date table by state and type puts 1,684,834 of the state’s 2,088,272 checks this year in the Permit Recheck column. That is 80.7 percent, against 197,685 handgun checks and 91,219 long gun checks.

Kentucky shows how far that column can swing a total. The state logged 272,859 checks in July, 104,210 in August and 22,937 in September. Through September 30, 635,845 of Kentucky’s 827,822 checks were permit rechecks.

The other four leaders all fell. Texas is down 6.5 percent from 143,083, California 4.4 percent from 118,255, Florida 6.9 percent from 109,479 and Pennsylvania 12.6 percent from 97,031. Across the table, 32 rows fell and 23 rose.

Florida did climb 12.6 percent from August’s 90,557, in the first month of the state’s four-month sales tax holiday, which opened September 1 and runs through December 31. It still finished below last September.

Among states with at least 10,000 checks, the two sharpest moves both sit next to a deadline. Connecticut rose 51.3 percent, from 15,635 to 23,655, in the last month before its convertible pistol ban was due to take effect on October 1. Colorado fell 27.2 percent, from 29,879 to 21,742, after logging 87,628 checks in July ahead of the August 1 start of SB 25-003.

Handguns, Long Guns and the Missing NFA Line

The type table is cumulative, so it runs January 1 through September 30. In that span the FBI counts 5,655,873 handgun checks, 3,490,806 long gun checks, 512,987 in its Other column and 225,507 covering more than one type of firearm, out of 17,737,493 in the state table.

Permits are most of the rest. There were 3,396,982 permit checks and 3,711,833 permit rechecks, which together make 7,108,815, or 40.1 percent of every state-level check this year. Four states, Illinois, Kentucky, Utah and Minnesota, account for 81.3 percent of the rechecks.

The FBI does not publish a September-only cut by type. But the copy of the same table archived on July 26 stopped at June 30, so subtracting one from the other isolates the third quarter: 1,685,344 handgun checks, 1,135,230 long gun, 187,366 Other and 1,416,798 permit rechecks.

Per month, handgun checks ran 15.1 percent below their first-half pace and long guns 3.6 percent below, while permit rechecks ran 23.5 percent above it. That is a summer quarter set against a winter and spring half, so read it as a snapshot and not a trend.

Now the NFA thread. The FBI defines Other as frames, receivers and firearms that are neither handguns nor long guns, “or National Firearms Act firearms, including silencers.” That column averaged 62,455 a month in the third quarter against 54,270 in the first half, a rise of 15.1 percent.

Texas stands out. Its Other column logged 23,394 checks in the third quarter, more than the 22,307 it logged in the entire first half, which more than doubles the monthly pace.

Texas is also where a federal judge entered the August 5 judgment barring ATF from enforcing NFA registration “as to untaxed firearms against the plaintiffs” and, where applicable, their members and customers. The order was stayed for seven days, which makes September the first full month under the injunction.

What none of the three PDFs carries is an NFA column. The NFA check count behind our August report is a separate series, and the FBI’s public files do not show a September number for it.

The Number That Settles September

The NSSF-adjusted figure decides whether September was a good month at the gun counter. If it comes in below September 2025, the 3.6 percent headline was paperwork. If it comes in above, buyers showed up and the permit columns fell away underneath them.

October is a steeper comparison either way. The FBI logged 2,344,310 checks in October 2025, the biggest month of that year’s second half.

Two million checks. Fewer of them in the state table than a year ago. That’s September.

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