Dr. Joseph Simonetti, lead author and assistant professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine said in a press release that almost half of U.S. veterans own guns and that the way people store them is correlated to a specific reason they possess the weapons. “We know that nearly half of all U.S. Veterans have firearms, and like many non-Veteran adults, it is common for them to store at least one gun loaded and unlocked. The challenge we uncovered, although I think we already suspected this, is that firearm safety practices are strongly related to whether individuals keep their firearms for protection," Simonetti said.