For decades, the image of gun ownership in America was white, rural and Republican, but that’s been changing, according to gun clubs, trainers, Second Amendment advocates and academic researchers.
They say more liberals, people of color and LGBTQ folks have been buying guns for years and particularly since Trump’s reelection in 2024. This story was based on more than 30 interviews. David Phillips is on the training team of the Liberal Gun Club, which has chapters in more than 30 states and provides a haven for liberals to train and learn about guns. He says club membership has grown from 2,700 in November to 4,500 today. Requests for training, he says, have quintupled.
“The concern is about the supporters of the right-wing who feel that they have been given permission to run roughshod at least, if not commit outright violence against people they don’t like,” Phillips says.
I was a range officer while in the military. If anybody in WNC need some training I would be happy to help. Training and practice is the key to firearm safety.
Thank you for offering your experience.
It is all I have to offer. The bottom line is train like you fight. Practice with your weapon.
Would help if you mentioned the state
Western North Carolina…
Ah, I didn’t know what that acronym was
We got a West North Carolina now? Fancy.
When are we getting East North Carolina, South North Carolina, or the holy grail, West East South North Carolina?
*waves from ENC*
All i want for christmas is central carolina
Western North Carolina—WNC
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It’s not fear…
It’s logical risk management.
And I’ve been saying for a while it’s past the point of a handgun for personal defense. Plated vests and rifles need to be the minimum.
This ain’t as bad as it can get, and there is zero reason to think shits gonna get better before it stops getting worse.
I’m on the left, never been anti gun but never owned a firearm till this gestapo crap started. I do not recognize the authority of ICE to question me, as a born US citizen I am not required to carry proof of citizenship. They come to my front door I’m not opening it and if they break my door down they’ll have my Beretta 1301 answering. I’d rather die in a firefight and taking some scum down with me than getting disappeared to some foreign prison because I had the audacity to be born brown.
Slightly unrelated but I live in a liberal county in Texas and am somewhat removed from all this and at the beginning I thought it was the news just making stuff up but I recently visited a family member in Chicago and I shit you not ICE and the police are straight up chasing brown people. If they see a Mexican they will interrogate you on the spot and god forbid you speak Spanish. It’s absolutely insane what we are allowing as a society and if this continues we will have a US citizen killed at a protest in the not too distant future.
MAGA won’t back down if they don’t get a bloody nose. Be it self defense or a civil war, the good guys need to be able to trade shots when the time comes.
The time was months ago.
Better late than never.
Remember folks: don’t just buy it, train with it.
And if you can get like minded friends to do the same even better.
Personally I’m not a fan of handguns, I prefer rifles but both are good at poking holes.
Also be sure to pick a firearm that takes a common type of round, the last thing you need to worry about is trying to find some obscure round type when you need it.
9mm Parabellum and .556 NATO?
9mm Parabellum
I’ve never heard 9mm referred to as that (had to look it up to be sure) but yeah 9mm and 5.56 NATO rounds are great choices as they’re available basically anywhere here in the states. So is 30-06, 308, and 22LR.
Personally I’ve got guns that take 5.56, 30-06, and 22LR. The 22LR are consistently the cheapest ones to shoot and I usually buy them by the box of 500. Among my friend group the only deviation is those that have handguns, they’ve got guns that take 9mm and 38 special as well.
Please do not count on 22LR for any sort of self defense purposes. It’s a great round for shooting paper targets and small critters, but against a human it has the stopping power of a letter opener. Sure, it might stop someone if you hit just the right spot, or pain might shock someone inexperienced into pausing long enough for you to run, but you don’t really want to be counting on either of those in a life or death scenario.
Yeah the 22LR is for fun for me not for defense. The 5.56 and 30-06 are quite expensive per shot by comparison so they’re shot less for fun and more for making sure I’m still skilled with them.
Both are excellent calibers. Their extreme abundance means you will always have ammo available. They also both offer very manageable recoil.
And just like that, the GOP will be in favor of gun control.
California’s famous anti-gun policies were born out of Republican fear of the Black Panthers.
they have to find a way to be in favor of gay oral first (trump blowing bubba and putin having the kompromat), but yes that’s on the list too
What do you think DOGE was REALLY doing? I, at least hope, I have done a good job in keeping my voting history and disdain for Trump and his supporters anonymous online and IRL other than in trusted circles. And at the end of the day, it was all for naught, because anyone who voted for Harris or Biden is on a list now that has already been disseminated. When the time comes, even though their numbers will be few, they think they will go town to town running roughshod over the libs.
Won’t they be surprised.
Is voting in the US not anonymous?
Your voter registration isn’t, at least. So, for example, anyone can easily look someone up online and see what party they’re registered with, along with their home address.
Don’t just buy guns.
Train with the guns you buy!!!
And with each other.
IRL events is filled with irony.
Dems are the ones that tried to implement “may-issue” gun permit laws, which delegated the power to issue gun permits to police discretion, guess what happens if a black dude tries to get a gun permit and the officer was white. See the problem? “I have a bad feeling about this guy, DENIED!”
Meanwhile, the 6 authoritarian far-right supreme court justices ironically were the ones that stuck down those shitty laws, and now it’s “shall-issue” nationwide, meaning cops can no longer use their discretion or “gut feeling” to deny gun permits, if a person meets the requirements, they are required to issue a gun permit. Makes the process more fair.
Such irony, authoritarians end up making carrying arms easier.
Only ironic if you don’t see the motivations behind their actions.
Liberals who feared a school shooter or deranged ex aren’t the ones arming up now. Conservatives who knocked down the regulations aren’t the ones who feel particularly threatened by a liberal with a gun.
authoritarians end up making carrying arms easier
But organizing any kind of community defense significantly harder. There’s no magic bullet you can buy to protect yourself from the violence of your neighbors, much less your external oppressors.
A great deal of the pro and anti gun frameworks have been about organizing local political interests into activist groups and police-aligned influencers.
The pro-gun groups have won primarily because their organizations are in tight with sitting administrations, but because they simple have guns available to any dipshit with a credit card and a driver’s license.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Pistols
The Pink Pistols is an LGBTQ gun rights organization in the United States and Canada. Their motto is “Pick on someone your own caliber”.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_Shooting_Sports_of_Utah
Stonewall Shooting Sports of Utah is a group of gun rights advocates in Utah. It supports the Pink Pistols’ idea that was described nationally in 2000 by writer Jonathan Rauch for the legal, responsible and safe use of weapons for their self defense, recreation and shooting sports.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Rifle_Association
The Socialist Rifle Association (SRA) is a socialist gun rights advocacy group based in the United States, which is dedicated to “providing working class people the information they need to be effectively armed for self and community defense.”[5][6][self-published source] The group advocates for Second Amendment gun rights from a left-wing perspective.[7]
https://blog.socialistra.org/official-statement-on-recent-doj-discussions/
Official Statement on Recent DOJ Discussions
The Socialist Rifle Association opposes in the strongest terms the stripping away of gun rights for our trans comrades. Trump’s DOJ is far beyond the pale having floated the idea.
It’s also worth noting that the major gun rights groups, which tend to be on the right side of the spectrum, also condemned the Trump administration for suggesting that trans people should be disarmed:
https://www.newsweek.com/gun-rights-group-condemn-trump-transgender-firearm-proposal-2125307
The National Rifle Association insists the Second Amendment “isn’t up for debate” as senior Justice Department officials have reportedly held internal deliberations about issuing regulations restricting transgender individuals from possessing guns in the wake of a shooting at a Catholic school in Minnesota that left two children dead and 17 others injured on August 27.
The Second Amendment Foundation, a Washington state-based gun rights advocacy nonprofit group, also blasted the Department of Justice’s reported consideration of new firearm restrictions, saying it “stands resoundingly in opposition” of any such policies.
Gun Owners of America, a Virginia-based nonprofit with more than two million members and supporters, also denounced the Trump’s administration reported plans.
“Gun Owners of America does not compromise with our support for the right of all the People to keep and bear arms,” GOA senior vice president Erich Pratt told Newsweek in a statement. “That means we oppose any and all gun bans — whether proposed by Republicans or Democrats. Anti-gunners would happily label every gun owner ‘crazy’ in order to confiscate our firearms and infringe on our rights. We’re not going to give up an inch.”
The National Association for Gun Rights, meanwhile, noted that only a Title III court can adjudicate someone as “mentally defective” for purposes of firearm restriction.
“It is a judicial branch function, not an executive branch function,” NAGR president Dudley Brown told Newsweek in a statement. “This process — and only this process — is available today as it may apply to transgenders or to any American suffering from mental health issues, but taking rights away from any American without due process is an affront to the Constitution. All ex parte gun bans are unconstitutional.”
A reminder to all those who want to buy a gun for protection, get training and not just shooting at paper.
I can tell you that even just being a hunter, you’re reaction to a situation that will involve potentially taking a life, you’re not going to react the way you think you will when adrenaline is pumping through you.
You saying we should practice shooting at living humans? I’m not really sure what you’re implying here…
There are many exercises to help train your reactions during actual emergencies that don’t involve firing live ammunition at real people. Im more familiar with martial arts than firearms, but sparring works.
Sparring…with guns?
Shooting competitions can be useful. Especially something like a 3-gun match where you’re moving around, reloading, changing weapons, have an accuracy penalty, and are running against a clock.
But the biggest problem there is money. Ammo is reaaly expensive these days, and 3-gun will use up a LOT of it.
Yeah, I don’t wanna go through the proper training to actually be a useful gun carrying person. I also don’t want to carry a gun. Between those two things, I haven’t bought one. If I weren’t a straight I might have to reconsider.
What if it’s a hunting trip to hunt predator animals instead of prey animals?
Wouldn’t that be better training because the creature can fight back?
Wouldn’t that be better training because the creature can fight back?
That depends. What kind of firearms training has the predator animal received and are they equally armed? Otherwise its bringing claws to a gun fight.
The hunter can always just bring humanity’s most iconic weapon to practice better: the spear.
If you are feeling fancy, a bow.
If you wanna go on a humanity fuck yeah trip, a gun.
There’s a lot of choices. What matters is that they develop a proper response in the face of danger and avoid freezing.
Hunting predators has caused massive ecological harm in the US.
Hunt hogs. They’re invasive and cause massive damage ecologically and economically. They can also fuck you up.
Hunting feral hogs is outdated management practice. It interferes with centralized operations that combat the feral hogs, but also educates the hog populations to be better at evading capture. Drop cages with baiting and cameras are the most effective management practice. Seconded by drones that use infrared to find sounders of hogs, those details are send to a helicopter with a sharpshooter to take out the whole sounder.
TL; DR: hunting feral hogs makes smart hogs and only makes thr problem of controlling and reducing population worse.
This isn’t entirely true… extermination of apex predators has brought environmental damage. Sustainable hunting is actually a net positive, brings additional revenue to the area and helps population dynamics. Specifically things like how they hunt African Lions today. The pick sick or old animals, it has high barrier to entry so it’s not something you do often and most of the money goes back into conservation and local developing economies.
So you’re saying thousands of people people who aren’t members of the rich, white, cis, straight Republican, male ruling class should spend 200 grand each to hunt old apex predators?
They shouldn’t be buying them out of fear… It should be out of the drive for the protection of genuine humanity.
If it’s about fear then America has no hope.
Good thing it is their right to keep and bear arms!
It isn’t a political party issue, it’s about defending rights when no one else can or will do it for you.
Gun rights are trans rights. They’re gay rights. They’re little old lady rights. They’re white rights, black rights, legal immigrant rights. They’re rights for weaklings, and rights for the strong.
That’s the thing about rights - we are all entitled to them!
Now go get yourself some instruction about safety, and time at the range, and don’t be stupid with your tools for death ☠️
It is good that people finally understand why its important to be able to have these. That said make sure if you buy on to train with it. A weapon you hold but cannot use belongs to your enemy.
Every “liberal” and “independent” should have at least one to carry in public and bigger one to defend your home and family with.
Don’t be the victim of a deranged, unhinged, Trump supporter and/or masked men at your door trying to kill you and your golden retriever only for the “liberal MSM” to whitewash and it relegate it to the back page by noon.
We’re rightfully scared of right wingers
