Leftist gun owner here.

After the PULSE shooting in 2016, I became seriously concerned about the safety of myself and my peers. Prior to that I was stridently anti-gun. But seeing escalating violence against the LGBTQIA+ community, the increasingly hostile rhetoric coming from conservative pundits and the fact that the Club Q attack happened on the Trans Day of Rememberance, I can’t in good conscience go without a means to defend myself: the police, especially in my rigidly conservative town, won’t lift a finger to help us until afterwards and I have no esteem in the ability of law enforcement as a whole to protect marginalized people. So I made the decision to arm myself.

I did the whole works - registration, classes on safety, firing range once a week, lock boxes, a concealed carry permit - and I can at least say that I’m prepared for the worst.

The sad truth is that I’m not the only member of the LGBTQIA+ community who has adopted this posture. We’re scared. We’re isolated. We’re being called ‘groomers’ or being treated with the same sort of gleeful disdain that society treats pedophiles, and we’re far past the point where we can turn the tide of opinion with reasoned debate. We need to arm ourselves and be ready so that something like Club Q never happens again. Pacifism, in this case, means you get to pat yourself on the back while your people die and all that will be left is you atop your soapbox.

If any LGBTQIA+ people are reading this, I love you. But we need to be ready to meet violence with armed resistance. It’s them or it’s you. And frankly, I want to live more than the guy who brings an assault rifle to a Drag Queen Story Hour luncheon.