August marked the 16th consecutive month to hit a record for gun sales, according to data released by the FBI.
A total of 1,853,815 individual background checks were processed through the agency’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System for the month. That was a slight increase over the previous record of 1,745,410 set in August 2015, and brought this year’s total to a whopping 17,880,475.
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A year-over-year record has been set every month since May 2015. A record 23,141,970 Americans sought to purchase guns last year, though 2016 is on track to smash that previous high. Gun sales tend to see an uptick during the holiday season, thanks mainly to gift-giving. The most firearm-friendly month on record is December 2015, when 3,314,594 applied to lock and load.
The number of checks run through the FBI’s NICS system is an indicator of how many guns are sold, though the correlation isn’t precise. Licensed dealers are required to run a check in the database every time they make a sale. Sales have surged in the wake of ammunition shortages and fears that the Obama administration may seek to restrict Second Amendment rights in the president’s waning days in office.
Buyers have mainly been seeking firearms for self-defense and hunting, according to an industry leader. “Sales of handguns and AR’s have been very strong for the past two months. Hunting rifles have been about average for this time of year,” Scott Blick, a managing partner at Ammunition Depot, told the Washington Examiner. “Ammunition sales are definitely following that pattern with sales of 9mm ammo and .223 ammo being extremely strong.”
A study released this year by the National Shooting Sports Foundation revealed that thousands of new jobs have been created by the gun industry since 2008. A 73 percent increase in jobs brought the total number to 287,986 at the close of 2015, and the industry accounted for a little more than $49 billion in economic activity.
