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Fearmongering has successfully fomented an uptick in firearm purchases for one minority group as individuals voice fears about “concentration camps.”
Even as multiple assassination attempts have been made against the once and future commander-in-chief, suggestions that President-elect Donald Trump was a fascist dictator have not died down from the left. Rhetoric suggesting rights are going out the window because conservatives are seeking to protect children from ideologues has evidently proven beneficial to gun sales as those who wave the rainbow flag are reportedly arming themselves for a “sense of safety and security.”
“The people I’ve been seeing on the left and the gay people who are out purchasing guns for the first time, it’s all about self-defense and fear,” Matthew Thompson of Oakland, New Jersey told the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The self-identified gay man who detailed dry firing drills in his home referenced the 2016 tragedy at the Pulse nightclub, which had previously resulted in a spike in gun sales, in announcing his pursuit of a concealed carry permit in the Garden State after the election, “We’re not looking to arm up and storm the Capitol. We just don’t want to be put in concentration camps.”
In reporting that “queer people” were increasingly arming themselves as a result of Trump’s return to the White House, the Inquirer referred to one individual as “A.” for stated “safety concerns,” as the outlet detailed, “As a trans woman who lives in Philadelphia, she began seriously considering armed self-defense this summer, as she saw Texas uphold a ban on gender-affirming care for minors and Florida prohibit nurse practitioners from prescribing hormones to transgender people.”
“She watched with increasing dread as Republicans spent nearly $215 million on network TV ads portraying people like her as a dangerous threat to the country,” read the report.
“Three months before the election, that’s when the alarm bells started to ring,” contended A. who went on to purchase a gun three days before the election.
“Minorities that are armed are more difficult to legally oppress,” said the newly-minted Second Amendment proponent who is reportedly reassured by the notion “in the event of hate crimes or terrorist attacks, knowing that, ‘OK, I’m personally armed and I can protect my property and people that are close to me.”
The Inquirer highlighted that A.’s backpack had a sticker that read “Protect Trans Kids.”
According to a spokesperson for the Liberal Gun Club, roughly a quarter of the thousands of training requests received since the election, surpassing all requests made in 2023, were from LGBTQ people.
Madeline Shearman, described by the Inquirer as “a trans woman based in Glen Mills who runs a casual and growing ‘2A social group’ in Pennsylvania,” said, “There’s definitely a feeling among a lot of LGBT individuals: ‘If I can’t protect myself, who will?’”
While admitting it was difficult to gauge trends in gun ownership for LGBTQ people due to a lack of published studies, Wake Forest University sociology professor David Yamane argued that American gun culture had shifted from recreation and hunting to self-defense.
Highlighting 2020, Yamane said, “It was a period of tremendous social unrest and social uncertainty. And a large number of people in the United States, under those conditions, look to firearms to reestablish some sense of safety and security.”
Meanwhile, an organizer for the Socialist Rifle Association during a monthly “Gun-damentals” course in West Philadelphia made a point of bringing up mental health concerns when he told attendees, “So guns are weapons, and they’re really good at what they do, which is killing things. 85% of suicides attempted with firearms led to death… So you have to be mindful, if this is something that you do want to bring into your life, that you’re aware of your own mental health going into it.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn’t researching current events and their impacts, you’ll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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