This weekend set a record for all single-day background check submittals in Colorado for potential gun purchases, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation officials.

The first day after news of one of the worst mass shootings in America, when a gunman killed 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., requests to buy guns in Colorado surged.

A total of 4,154 background checks were submitted on Saturday, said CBI spokeswoman Susan Medina. Those figures topped the previous greatest number of background checks on Black Friday this year, when 4,028 were processed.

The surge after the massacre surprised CBI officials, who said the office wasn't adequately staffed to deal with demand. The situation soon created a backlog and increasingly long wait times for potential gun buyers waiting for check results.

So many background checks were submitted the process that normally usually takes minutes turned into wait times of more than 15 hours.

"We had to call in extra staff," Medina said. "The wait times were high."

Because of the wait times, many would-be buyers went home without results. Medina said 3,001 of the requests were processed Saturday.

By Sunday, the wait for a processed background check grew to 18 hours, Medina said. By Monday afternoon, it took longer than 21 hours for a check to be processed.

Richard Taylor, manager of Firing Line — which bills itself as Colorado's largest gun shop and has been active since the mid-1980s — said the store had never been as busy as it was over the weekend, and times for a background check to be processed proved it.

"It's just been crazy," he said. "I'm surprised the system didn't crash, it's been so busy."

The rush began Friday afternoon after news of the Sandy Hook shootings broke, Taylor said. Customers coming to the store speculated on how laws could change in the aftermath while browsing the store's selections, he said.

Assault-style rifles were the most popular gun over the weekend, Taylor said.

On Monday afternoon, multiple customers were examining rifles like the model police say was used in the shootings at an Aurora theater and on Friday in Connecticut.

George Samaras was among customers shopping at Firing Line on Monday.

Delays meant he had to wait at least a day on his background check.

"I have wanted to buy a gun for a while now," Samaras said. "It's not out of fear, if that were the case, I would have gotten one after Aurora."

Samaras said many of his friends owned guns and one had a concealed carry permit.

While he wasn't surprised more people were interested in buying firearms following the school shooting on Friday, Samaras said he wasn't expecting his background check to take so much time.

CBI prepared for weeks leading up to Black Friday, counting on the high numbers of checks to be processed, but the bureau was completely surprised by this weekend, Medina said.

On Sunday, President Barack Obama vowed to use "whatever power this office holds" in efforts to prevent another mass shooting in the U.S.

According to CBI data, last year 245,475 firearm applications were approved out of the 251,307 submitted. The approval figure doesn't provide the scope of gun sales, as a buyer can get multiple guns with a single background check and the state doesn't track gun purchases.

FBI data show that 16.4 million background checks were run nationwide in 2011.

Stephen Fischer Jr., spokesman for the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, said he could not comment on national background check figures for the weekend at the direction of division executive management.

However, previously, Fischer said on Black Friday this year, 154,873 would-be gun buyers inundated the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) with the most applications since the system's inception in 1998.

The flood of applications that day was 20 percent higher than applications processed on Black Friday 2011, Fischer said. Twice during the day, the system shut down — once for 18 minutes and again for 14 minutes.

Ryan Parker: 303-954-2409, rparker@denverpost.com or twitter.com/ryanparkerdp

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