I’d never shot an AR. I barely knew how to use a pistol. I’m more of an everyday carry pepper spray and pocket knife guy than a classic gun toter. However, for a while now, political anxiety has been eating at my stomach, leading to a more general curiosity about firearm ownership.
As a longtime supporter of strict gun laws, it felt strange going into a gun store for the first time. Black rifles lined the counter, alongside “Antifa Hunting License” stickers. I browsed the selection without any idea what I was looking for, riffling through dusty boxes of ammo and faded Osama bin Laden paper targets.
While the staff was nice enough to entertain my base-level questions, I felt out of my depth, and not entirely welcome—the novelty stickers didn’t help. Maybe the staff could smell something on me that was foreign to them, or perhaps they just didn’t care for my Denver Broncos hat. (It’s hard bein’ a "Bo-liever"!) Either way, I decided to look elsewhere for guidance, in the hopes of finding an alternative gun culture to the one I knew.
A growing number of left-leaning folks are reconsidering their attitudes to our nation’s second amendment in the wake of political upheaval, a rise in hateful rhetoric towards LGBTQ+ communities, and even the vigilante actions of Luigi Mangione. Still, for many in queer spaces, firearms conjure images of the 2022 Club Q mass shootings, where Tulsan Daniel Davis Aston died saving someone’s life, and other acts of violence enacted against minority communities. In a nation that refuses to deal seriously with gun control and mass shootings, many advocates believe that what they see as an arms race is just not a solution to end the cycles of violence.
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However, historically, groups such as the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement have relied heavily on guns to protest oppression and protect their community when they couldn’t trust or rely on higher authority. So, with a growing number of liberal and leftist gun owners, demand for spaces to train and learn has blossomed since the last election. Where there is demand, there is someone willing to fill it, which is how I got into the world of local alternative gun organizations and the people who run them.
While I knew of national groups like the Socialist Rifle Association and the John Brown Club, I wanted to look closer to home. Soon enough, I got in touch with the growing local LGBTQ+ gun community. I quickly found that, just as the LGBTQ+ community isn’t a homogeneous monolith, neither are its gun owners.
My first stop into alternative gun culture was with Mike Abla and Inclusive Defense Training (IDT), who I came across on Instagram. I liked the vibe of their page, but it was their slogan—“Come learn how to be dangerous with us!”—next to their sign-up link that sold me.