According to the website Mass Shooting Tracker, 56-year-old Robert Dear became America's 351st mass shooter when he opened fire on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado on Friday and according to gun sales across the country that day, more Americans than ever are gearing up with gun power of their own.
More than 185,000 background checks required for gun purchases were processed last Friday, America's national day of shopping, according to USA Today. That same day, Dear held a women's health clinic in Colorado Springs hostage for five hours, eventually killing three people and wounding nine others.
"This was an approximate 5% increase over the 175,754 received on Black Friday 2014," wrote Stephen Fischer, the FBI's chief of multimedia productions. "The previous high for receipts were the 177,170 received on 12/21/2012." Of course, the horrific Sand Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, occurred just days before.
But Black Friday gun deals across America are nothing new, as the FBI has listed the shopping "holiday" as one of its top ten highest days of the year for background checks in 2012, 2013 and 2014. According to USA Today, FBI data shows that the bureau has processed requests for more than 220 million firearm purchases since 1998:
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