Black is beautiful. I stopped in Spurlock’s Gun Shop in Henderson, Nev., on Black Friday to find a crowd of customers besieging Rance and Pat Spurlock, the husband-wife owners. Black Friday is so named for the widespread belief that retailers only go from “being in the red” to becoming profitable on the Friday following Thanksgiving. Such is not the case at Spurlock’s Gun Shop, even though Black Friday was a huge day for the shop.

Rance Spurlock said: “This year in particular I think we sold something like 35 guns, which is a tremendous day for us. Normally we don’t get the really heavy Christmas traffic until the first week in December but that Friday was nuts in here.

“We were a man short that day too,” Rance added.

I asked the affable proprietor if he thinks the Black Friday phenomenon affects the gun business.

“Normally it’s just another day to us,” he said. However, Rance added that he arrived at 8 a.m. to open at the usual 9 a.m. time and found a woman waiting in her car to buy a gun.

“Black Friday has never been a big deal for us. I don’t carry the gimmick stuff like air soft or accessory stuff. Black Friday has always been a day to me where I want to avoid the department stores where things are just nuts. But I don’t think the gun business has that kind of walk-in traffic that the electronics stores have with iPhones and what have you,” Rance said.

USA Today reported that 129,166 guns were sold on Black Friday, the most ever on a single day since the FBI began conducting NICS checks in 1993; the previous record was held by another Black Friday, that of 2008.

Do you remember what was  going on at that time?