Here lately, there’s been a lot of talk about who the Second Amendment is really for. The comments from some who claim to be pro-gun about Alex Pretti being armed have been taken as evidence that none of us really think it’s for everyone, that it’s still something for straight, white men with a few tokens to provide cover or something.
But it’s not, and a lot of us have been denouncing those comments quite regularly. It’s kind of frustrating, really, and especially when so many of us support groups like the Pink Pistols on some level.
And the group just got some media attention in Pittsburgh.
Pink Pistols Pittsburgh formed a year ago, becoming one of 50 chapters of the national organization across the United States and Canada. The local chapter’s first year coincided with heightened tension around gender and sexual identity. Since summer, Pittsburgh’s Public Source spent time with the Pink Pistols as they practiced their sport and built a community now marking its first anniversary.
In the heat of late August, passing traffic bounced beams of light through the dark corners of the heavy metal gym Death Comes Lifting in Pittsburgh’s Allentown neighborhood. Kei, who asked to have their last name withheld for their safety, perused a table of unloaded guns laid out for Pink Pistols Pittsburgh’s “Pistol Practice in the Crypt” class.
Now training in competitive shooting, Kei’s original introduction to gun culture was through more conservative crowds. “There was a time in my life where this was no issue,” they said. “It wasn’t until maybe two years ago that I started to begin transitioning that things became a little bit more complicated.” Kei wanted to learn more, but felt less comfortable in the traditional firearms spaces they’d come to know. An encounter in which they were harassed and followed in Market Square pushed them to expand their self-defense skills.
“That is a terrifying feeling, knowing that you’re prey,” Kei said. They spent nights scrolling through Reddit, looking for a local option that could bridge their two worlds, before finding and connecting with Pink Pistols Pittsburgh. “I’m less scared now. I certainly feel more encouraged to go outside,” Kei said, smiling through dark red lipstick, curtain bangs framing their face. “Not because I’m looking to start a fight, more because I feel like I have the training and tools now to give me an edge in preventing the fight in the first place, and if necessary, winning the fight.”
I may or may not agree with everyone’s lifestyle, their decisions about things in general, or anything else about them, but they do have the right to keep and bear arms, and I will die defending their right to exercise it.
That’s my line in the sand, and I don’t need to have someone fit some particular mold for it to matter.
The Pink Pistols often say, “Armed gays don’t get bashed,” and that’s a perfectly rational sentiment. If someone feels they might be the target of a violent crime, arming oneself is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Should you have to? No, but that’s not the point. I shouldn’t have to worry about whether I’ll get cancer or Alzheimer’s, but I do. With violent crime, though, I can do a lot more to mitigate the risks than I can with health concerns.
However, too few people seem to see it the same way. I’ve seen the comments deriding folks like those in the Pink Pistols, and let me tell you something here and now. We need these folks.
Groups like the Pink Pistols are useful not just in deterring violent crime like the rest of us try to do, but also because this is a key demographic that Democrats want to woo. If enough of them become pro-gun, gun control becomes less tenable from the party most likely to push it. The same with minorities and women who embrace the Second Amendment.
Not only should the Second Amendment apply to everyone, because it does, but actually acting as it makes it that much harder to strip away and pretend you’re concerned about women, gays, and ethnic minorities.
The 2A is for everyone.
Good on the Pittsburgh chapter of the Pink Pistols for showing people that.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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