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Guns In America

State-by-state gun laws and death rates, maps of recent school and workplace shootings and facts on who’s at risk.

According to the SportsOneSource, a research firm that tracks the sports goods industry, firearms sales in large retail outlets are up 39% this year. Shops across the country are reporting ammunition shortages since stores can’t meet demand for bullets. Data from the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which the industry uses as a proxy for overall firearms sales, is also revealing. From November 2008 through March 2009, FBI background checks, which are required every time a federally licensed gun dealer makes a sale, rose 29.3% over the same period a year ago. In November alone checks jumped 42%, to 1,529,635, the largest monthly total in the decade the system has been in place. “Consumer demand is unprecedented,” says Larry Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association for the firearms and ammunition industry.

Read more via Boom in Gun Sales Fueled by Politics and the Economy – TIME.

Per the Handgun Carry Permits database are the number of permits for the selected cities below.  Knoxville had 11,244 permits