“There have been more guns sold since I’ve been president than just about any time in U.S. history,” Obama said in June.

Over the two consecutive terms Barack Obama has served as President, gun sales have continued to rise. Over the two consecutive terms Barack Obama has served as President, gun sales have continued to rise. That may have done more in the way of criminal justice reform than his White House meetings with hip-hop and rap stars.

Background checks have hit record numbers in the past 19 months consecutively and the total number of guns sold this year already outnumbers 2015. But the sharp increase in armed Americans could also hand Obama an unintentional achievement. Could the greatest gun salesman in American history also be credited with helping the violent crime rate to decrease 16% over the past decade?

Studies compiled from interviews of felony prisoners in 10 state correctional facilities revealed that 56 percent said that criminals would not attack a potential victim that was known to be armed. So an increase in gun owners should naturally lead to a decrease in criminals.

But has it?

According to the FBI, nearly 1.2 million violent crimes were committed in 2015, a 3.4% increase from 2014. But what most people don’t realize is that violent crime is actually at historically low numbers. The 2015 numbers are only 0.7% less than 2011, however that’s an impressive decrease of 16.5% compared to a decade ago.

In fact, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports violent crime has decreased a whopping 77% since 1993 with only 18.6 victimizations per 1,000 people (age 12 or older) compared to 79.8 victimizations 23 years ago.

24.7 million criminal background checks for gun purchases have already been processed as of November 30th – that’s 1.6 million more than were processed in all of 2015. Black Friday helped to pack a bigger bang, recording 185,713 checks processed in one day – another all-time record.

With gun sales on the rise and violent crime rates at an all-time low, think the gun control agenda will finally see for themselves that Americans being responsibly armed is a good thing?

One can only hope.