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 might be misremembering, but I think even the much maligned bump stock was created as an accessibility device originally. It might be another kind of similar stock that was victimized by the media, but IIRC the bump stock was designed as an aid for veterans who had lost a limb to allow them to use a pistol one-handed.
There’s a lot of stuff like that that has been fear mongered by the media. Like suppressors. Everybody has been told that they make a gun basically silent when what they actually do is reduce the sound of a gun from “permanent hearing damage” to “not permanent hearing loss.”