But medical marijuana comes in many forms. “You can take it as a pill or edible form,” Kaskie said. “You could rub in on your skin lesions. That's what I saw one person with cancer doing, and it provided relief for him. And that just was what really struck me. It's like, wow, there's a whole population of older persons out there who actually see this as a medical benefit.”

For some, the hardest part is the realization that older Americans, who will likely be hardest hit by changes to health care and discretionary spending, were among the Republican president-elect’s biggest supporters. “I have worked in gerontology since the ’80s,” said Toni Miles, MD, who heads the gerontology department at the University of Georgia. “I feel betrayed because older people voted for a guy I couldn’t stomach.”

Older Americans have the highest gun ownership rates in the United States, with firearms in 40 percent of households headed by someone age 50 to 64 or age 65 and older, according to the Pew Research Center. And a disproportionate number of older Americans apply to carry concealed weapons, according to a 2012 study in the American Journal of Public Health. The reasons for such trends vary: older Americans tend to have more disposable income with which to buy guns; they’ve had a longer time to amass an arsenal; and many invest in arms as a way to counter the physical vulnerabilities that can come with aging.