a whopping 67 percent of US gun owners cited “protection” as their primary reason for owning a gun in a 2017 national survey by the Pew Research Center, while just 38 percent claimed that they used guns for “hunting.” These numbers represented inversions of 1999 survey results, when 49 percent of gun owners cited hunting as the reason for owning a gun while just 26 percent said they owned a gun for protection.33
