A survey of U.S. veterans finds that more than half own firearms and, of those, 53% reported storing their guns unsafely, even as the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs have invested heavily in recent years to encourage safe storage practices.
The percentage of vets who store weapons unsafely — defined as loaded and not secured; loaded and secured; or unloaded but with ammunition available and not secured — has declined since 2015, when the last large-scale national study found that nearly 78% of veterans reported storing their firearms in an unsafe manner.
But the authors of the research, Firearm Storage Practices Among Veterans in the United States: Findings from a Nationally Representative Survey, published online last month in the Journal of Affective Disorders, said that, given the emphasis placed on gun safety among military personnel and veterans, they were surprised by the continued, relatively high rates of unsafe storage.
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“Our findings suggest that a considerable proportion of veterans continue to store their personal firearms unsafely,” said Robert Pietrzak, a VA researcher and professor of psychiatry and public health at Yale School of Medicine, in an email to Military.com.
According to the survey, veterans with a history of depression or substance use were more likely to store firearms unsafely, as were those who had…
