The number of firearm background checks, and consequently the number of guns purchased, continues to following an increasing trend as reported by the different gun manufacturers in the United States. The recently reported numbers have revealed an industry wide surge in the demand for firearms and shooting accessories in this presidential election year.

The outdoor merchandise retailer, Cabela’s, had reported a positive sales trend for guns, ammunition, optics, and rifle scopes for the past few months. The company reported that their flattening sales began to experience an uptrend at the end of 2015, which easily set new sales records for them. Smith & Wesson also reported an increase in their net sales for 2016, which was actually about 40% compared to the same period in 2015.

The reports from the suppliers and the retailers also coincide with the recent figures reported by the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System who had processed around 1.99 million background checks in September alone. The September background checks are a 10.9% increase over the same month last year. Every month throughout the year was also revealed to be at an all time high over the past years, with 2016 raring to beat the 23.1 million background checks reported in 2015.

Of course the number of FBI background checks that have been run do not really translate to the exact number of guns purchase. Several of the checks are for permit applications and some consumers do sometimes purchase more than one firearm. Despite this fact, the data is used by the firearms industry to track and measure the overall sales within the country. There have also been some discrepancies recently discovered within the FBI’s database as some states have yet to provide their own data leading to the underreporting of checks. Although, even with the absence of these data, the current figures still do reveal a staggering amount of background checks for 2016.