Government agencies have confirmed a spike in gun sales and background checks in Florida as well as other states since the re-election of President Barack Obama on November 6 this year. On the day of the election, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement had performed 2,227 background checks, that’s an increase compared to 1,165 on the same day of the previous year and on November 7, the day after Obama retook the presidency, more than 3,000 request for firearm purchase were submitted in Florida.

Obama hasn’t made any executive orders or issued any bills on gun-control, yet. But he said during a presidential debate on Oct. 16, that he’s trying to “get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally.” “Part of it is seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced,” Obama said.

These spikes in gun sales are brought about by fear that the president would seek more stringent gun laws on his second term, and want to get their hands on firearms before it becomes harder for them to do so when these laws are passed. The people’s fear were not just prompted by his statements in the presidential debate but also by previous gun laws, like the 1994 assault weapons ban, signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, but then expired in 2004. “There’s quite a big jump from two weeks before versus two weeks after the election,” said Eric Sandberg, owner of Centennial Arms in East Naples. Florida also saw a bump after Obama’s first election in 2008. That October there were 44,475 background checks conducted in Florida, spiking to 65,859 a month later.

Nationally, there were 1.6 million background checks conducted in October initiated through the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, according to NSSF documents. That was up from 1.3 million background checks in October 2011.

Local gun stores and shops also noticed a trend in sales specially among women. Since 2001, there has been a 51.5 percent increase in the number of women who target shoot and a 41.8 percent increase in the number of women who hunt, according to the National Sporting Goods Association’s annual sports participation report.