When I woke up to the news that 49 people had died at an LGBT nightclub massacre in Orlando, I turned off my phone and fell back asleep, drifting into nightmares. I couldn’t stop myself from imagining a shooter armed with an assault rifle terrorizing the first gay bars I attended after coming out of the closet. Distraught, I was unable to get out of bed for hours.
One week later, I put on bright green headphones and plastic goggles, clutched a .45 caliber handgun with a snake-scale pattern on the grip, and fired a round of bullets into the chest of a human outline drawn on a paper target.
I had never shot a gun before. As a queer person of color, I felt queasy about my editors’ idea that I spend time at a shooting range with pro-gun activists so soon after the unimaginably horrific attack on the LGBT community during Latino night at Pulse.
But the Pink Pistols are not your average gun advocates, and they have been receiving a great deal of attention in the wake of the Orlando atrocity.
The group is a national LGBT firearms club that encourages queer people to arm themselves and fight back against new gun restrictions. Membership, organizers say, has tripled since the attack in Orlando.
There’s a history of marginalized groups taking up arms to defend themselves against racist and homophobic violence – a narrative conveniently absent from the modern gun control debate.
In the 1960s, when the Black Panthers asserted their rights to protect black neighborhoods with armed patrols, Ronald Reagan and other Republicans came out in support of gun restrictions. In an even more forgotten chapter of gun rights, a San Francisco LGBT group called the Lavender Panthers used firearms to defend queers from gay bashings in the 1970s.
The Pink Pistols, I would find out, is not an organization that evolved from the brave black and queer groups that fought back against violent assaults of decades past. Instead, while it may defy social expectations and challenge identity politics, its arguments emulate the conventional wisdom propagated by the conservative National Rifle Association.
Still, when I drove an hour south of San Francisco to a small shooting range called Target Masters, I was hopeful I might hear a more nuanced perspective on the highly charged debates on guns and homophobia that have emerged from the 12 June massacre. Like others, I’ve grown weary of hearing straight, white politicians use the tragedy to push gun control or mass surveillance while glossing over the reality that the shooting was an assault on LGBT people and Latinos.
At the suburban strip mall that housed the gun range, Nicki Stallard greeted me, a briefcase filled with guns in her hand.
The 56-year-old transgender woman and chapter leader of the Pink Pistols told me with a laugh that she gets along well with conservatives who oppose gays, as well as liberals who oppose guns.
There are more than 300 members in her local San Jose chapter.
“I do not like violence,” she said. “But I accept that when violence is called for in the situation, where I have to defend my life, where I have to protect it, it is the only answer.”
I was initially intrigued by the idea of a gun as an empowering tool for LGBT people who face disproportionate rates of violence. I know what it’s like to feel physically unsafe simply because I’m visibly queer. Whether it was middle school teasing or a boyfriend letting go of my hand in public for fear that we might be harassed or worse, I’ve spent a lot of energy wondering if I look and sound straight enough to avoid danger.
I know that for trans women of color, the threats are significantly greater. Whether it’s bullying, street insults, or physical attacks by strangers or family members, there are so many forms of violence facing vulnerable queers.
But firing a gun did not give me strength – it made me feel physically ill.
I shuddered every time a shooter next to me fired a bullet. With each loud explosion, my anxiety grew. I could not stop thinking about the brief moment when Pulse clubgoers thought the gunman’s shots were just another dance beat. I could not stop picturing people hiding in the bathroom at Pulse, waiting to die. I could not stop remembering the gruesome fact that investigators faced a room filled with bodies and cellphones ringing off the hook as loved ones kept calling.
When it was my turn to shoot, my hands were so shaky that I couldn’t load the gun. Nicki was a patient teacher, and eventually I held my breath and fired.
I thought about what it must feel like to be on the receiving end of a powerful bullet, and I got out of the room as quickly as possible. Later, I was so overwhelmed recounting the gunfire that I broke down.
Although we share a queer identity, the Pink Pistols and I have little common ground.
I cannot accept that standing up to homophobic hate and violence means, as Nicki suggested to me, arming more queers, expanding security and police in LGBT spaces, and assigning “designated shooters” to go with us to the nightclub, sober and packing.
As Nicki demonstrated how she would have stopped the Orlando shooter if she was armed at Pulse, I understood the painfully depressing truth of the Pink Pistols’ message. They accept gun violence as normal, promote a grotesque culture of firearms, and blame LGBT people for showing up to nightclubs unarmed. And if I learned anything from my trip to Target Masters, it’s that there’s nothing empowering about loading a gun and firing back.
