Are Firearms Sales On A Decline?

November NICS Stats are in over at the FBI. (get the report here)

2021 started with January's numbers almost 2X that of 2021 (4.32M vs. 2.70M)

However, since June June 2021, month over month on average, there have been 0.65M fewer NICS checks per month than in 2020.

Closing off November YTD 2021 vs. 2020, there have been barely 0.02M more checks than last year over the same period.

If December closes at the monthly average of 3.25M checks, there will have been 37.38M NICS checks which are ~2.32M less than last year.

Do things feel like they slowed down with regard to firearms purchases? If so, why do you think so?