They don't fit the stereotype of who "should" own a gun. That's the whole point. These are real people — sourced from public interviews and their own published words — who've decided that the Second Amendment belongs to them too.
March 28, 2026·8 min read
There's a story America tells about gun owners. It's white. It's rural. It's Republican. It's a guy in camo with a pickup truck and a "Come and Take It" sticker.
That story was always incomplete. Now it's being rewritten — by people the old narrative never had room for.
The voices below come from published interviews, public speeches, and on-the-record reporting by outlets including NPR, Washingtonian, News Is Out, and the organizations these people built. Nobody here was invented. Every quote is sourced. These are Americans who exist at the intersection of gun rights and LGBTQ identity — and they're done asking for permission to be both.
The Founder
Erin Palette
Transgender lesbian · Founder of Operation Blazing Sword · National Coordinator of the Pink Pistols
The far right loves my support of the Second Amendment but hates that I'm gay and transgender, and the far left loves my queerness but hates that I'm pro-gun. I catch a lot of flak from both sides for not supporting their version of freedom.
Palette founded Operation Blazing Sword the day after the 2016 Pulse massacre to connect LGBTQ people with friendly firearms instructors. By the time OBS merged with the Pink Pistols in 2018, the combined organization had an estimated 30,000 members and 1,600 volunteer instructors across all 50 states. She describes herself as "pro-gun, pro-queer, and libertarian" — a combination that confounds people on both sides of the political aisle, which is exactly the point.
I'm a trans woman. I mostly teach LGBTQ+ people, but also people of color and Muslims — groups who are often uncomfortable in traditional, conservative gun spaces.
Elliott runs ATW Firearms Instruction — the initials stand for Armed Trans Women. Featured in a 2024 Washingtonian profile on LGBTQ gun owners, she represents a growing network of instructors who've created alternative spaces for people who don't feel welcome in traditional gun culture. For her students, the barrier isn't the gun itself — it's the culture surrounding it. Elliott's business exists to remove that barrier entirely.
Source: Washingtonian, "LGBTQ+ Gun Owners Are Breaching the Right-Wing Arms Bubble," February 2024
The Texan
Andy Nold
Gay man · Arlington, Texas
I know transgender people who carry. They've gotten threatened and beat up.
Andy grew up in West Texas, where gun ownership is as embedded in the culture as Friday night football. For him, guns aren't about politics or identity — they're about family and practicality. But he's also watched LGBTQ friends arm themselves out of necessity, not ideology. His perspective represents a large segment of queer gun owners who don't see firearms as a political statement. They see them as tools — the same way their straight neighbors do.
Source: News Is Out, "The Rise of LGBTQ+ Gun Ownership," March 2025
The Spokesperson
Thomas Boyer
Spokesperson, San Francisco chapter of the Pink Pistols
I've never seen a surge like this before.
Boyer was speaking about the wave of new interest in the Pink Pistols following the 2024 election. The San Francisco chapter — operating in one of the most progressive cities in America — reported unprecedented demand for training and membership. The Pink Pistols' motto, "Armed gays don't get bashed," was coined from a 2000 essay by libertarian writer Jonathan Rauch, who argued that LGBTQ people should organize around firearms proficiency. Twenty-five years later, the idea has gone from fringe to mainstream within the community.
Source: NPR, "Why liberals, people of color and LGBTQ Americans say they're buying guns," October 2025
The Sociologist
Dr. David Yamane
Professor of Sociology, Wake Forest University
It's 100 percent true that when I hear the kind of culture-warrior arguments coming from the gun community that tie gun ownership to all of those other things — dangerous Black people taking over cities, hordes coming over the border — that stuff just makes me repelled from identification as a gun owner.
Yamane studies gun culture in America and has documented how the traditional image of the gun owner — white, conservative, male — has been shifting for over a decade. His research confirms what these stories illustrate: the new gun owner doesn't look like the old one, and many of them feel alienated by the political packaging that gun culture wraps around itself. The discomfort isn't with the gun. It's with the bumper stickers.
Source: Washingtonian, February 2024; NPR, November 2025
The Student
Anonymous OBS Volunteer
Queer person · First-time gun owner · Trained through Operation Blazing Sword
I was quite clueless around pistols, and quite intimidated by my lack of knowledge. His quiet acceptance of a queer person will make it easier for me to eventually find my way out of this closet I'm in the back of.
This testimonial was published on the Operation Blazing Sword website as part of the organization's fourth anniversary of the Pulse massacre. The person was connected with a volunteer instructor through OBS, who provided free training without judgment. Their account captures something the statistics can't: the emotional weight of being in a "gun closet" on top of every other closet LGBTQ people navigate. For many, learning to shoot isn't just about safety — it's about agency.
Source: Operation Blazing Sword, "Pulse: Four Years Later," 2020
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In-depth interviews with LGBTQ gun owners formed the basis of Dr. Thatcher Combs' 2022 dissertation at UT Austin — one of the few academic studies to center queer gun owners' own perspectives
Source: Combs, "Queers Bash Back: LGBTQ Gun Owners and Queer(ing?) Politics in the United States," 2022
What These Stories Tell Us
Individually, each of these people breaks a different mold. Palette breaks the assumption that trans women can't be gun rights leaders. Elliott breaks the assumption that gun spaces have to be conservative spaces. Andy breaks the assumption that LGBTQ gun ownership is new or radical. Boyer breaks the assumption that San Francisco can't produce gun enthusiasts. Yamane breaks the assumption that studying guns and criticizing gun culture are contradictions.
Together, they paint a picture of a movement that doesn't fit neatly into any political box — and doesn't want to. The through line isn't left or right. It's personal. Every person quoted here arrived at gun ownership through their own experience: of fear, of vulnerability, of a system that couldn't always protect them, and of a decision that they would learn to protect themselves.
That's not a contradiction. That's the most American story there is.
Your Story Matters Too
Are you an LGBTQ gun owner with a story to share? We want to hear from you. Your experience — whether it's your first range trip, your journey to self-defense, or how you navigate being armed and queer in your community — could help someone else take that first step.