Yes, the queer community feels threatened. Supporters of the president-elect, Donald Trump, and his team have announced policies that could set back policies that have reached this community and would now be in danger of losing.
Since Donald Trump’s reelection in November, nontraditional gun groups across the city and country have seen a flood of interest. The national Liberal Gun Club said it has received thousands of training requests since the election, more than in all of 2023. A spokesperson for the group estimated that roughly a quarter were from LGBTQ people.
In Philadelphia, in the waning weeks of the year, residents peppered local queer Facebook groups with questions about guns and training. The local chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association, a leftist analogue to the National Rifle Association, said it saw a surge in paid memberships; its regular classes about gun safety filled up immediately, so they added more. The head of the Delaware Valley chapter of the Pink Pistols, a longtime gay gun group with the slogan “Armed Gays Don’t Get Bashed,” said he received a sudden flurry of emails inquiring about gun training.
“There’s definitely a feeling among a lot of LGBT individuals: ‘If I can’t protect myself, who will?’” said Madeline Shearman, a trans woman based in Glen Mills who runs a casual and growing “2A social group” in Pennsylvania . “I feel that way myself.”
In Pennsylvania, overall gun sales were down in 2024, according to figures from the State Police: 666,759 firearms were legally purchased or privately transferred through the end of October, a drop from the 2020 record high of 1.1 million.
It’s difficult to track rises and falls in LGBTQ gun ownership because there are few published studies about the relatively small population, said David Yamane, a professor of sociology at Wake Forest University and author of the book “Gun Curious.”
But in general, Yamane argues that American gun culture has dramatically shifted in recent years, away from a focus on hunting and recreation and toward a focus on self-defense, the core of what he calls “Gun Culture 2.0.” As the culture has shifted, people who own guns have become much more diverse. I have pointed to 2020 as a pivotal year.
“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,” Yamane said. He added that racial and gender minorities “led the way” in terms of new gun ownership rates in 2020 and beyond.
Yamane also pointed to other political moments that have fueled gun interest in the LGBTQ community. Pink Pistols, which has more than two dozen chapters across the country, was originally founded in 2000 after writer Jonathan Rauch proposed in a Salon article that “homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. “They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry.”
The devastating mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Florida in 2016 was another catalyst. That’s when Matthew Thompson, who lives in Oakland, N.J., bought his first gun. A gay man and custom leather worker, Thompson often travels to leather and bear events on the weekends, and feared what might happen. He began practicing drills at home — setting a timer on his phone, wearing his unloaded gun around the house, and drawing it quickly when the timer went off.
Days after the presidential election, he began pursuing his concealed carry permit in New Jersey. He is also organizing other LGBTQ people to practice at a local gun range.
“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,” said Thompson, who is 36. “We’re not looking to arm up and storm the capital. “We just don’t want to be put in concentration camps.”
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