Lara Smith, national spokeswoman for the liberal gun club, says membership has increased since President Trump’s election last year. She says people of color and trans people have asked for the training after experiencing threats in their communities.
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Hadassah Grout Photography
When Charles was growing up in Brooklyn, New York in the 1970s, his mother was so strict, she banned toy guns of any kind, including squirt guns.
He recalls, “I remember well, on summer days, when there would be firing among my friends in the water and I would not be able to participate.”
He grew up and became a doctor, and these days, he goes to a shooting range in Maryland every week for target practice with his Smith & Wesson .380.
Charles, who is Black, says he bought the handgun after the Trump administration did things that frightened him, including arresting a foreign student who criticized his university’s policy on Israel and handcuffing a U.S. senator who was forcibly removed from a Homeland Security news conference.
“What I’m talking about is protecting yourself from a situation where some kind of civil unrest could occur,” says Charles. Like most of the people who spoke to NPR for this story, he requested that his last name not be used for fear of retribution.
Dr. Charles was not even allowed to own a toy gun as a child in Maryland. Now, he says he is so concerned about his family’s safety because of the Trump administration’s actions and rhetoric that he trains weekly at a shooting range.
Katie Knazawicz
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Katie Knazawicz
Charles says he worries that some supporters of President Trump might someday feel emboldened to target minorities like him and his family.
“He can send the citizens or the government,” says Charles. “I’m not saying that’s what’s going to happen. What I’m saying is that any of this is out of the question now.”
The changing face of American gun ownership
For decades, the image of gun ownership in America was white, rural and Republican, but according to gun clubs, trainers, Second Amendment advocates and academic researchers, that is changing.
They say more liberals, people of color and LGBTQ people have been buying guns over the years and especially since Trump’s reelection in 2024. This story was based on more than 30 interviews. David Phillips is on the training team at 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. He says requests for training have increased fivefold.
Phillips says, “The concern is about right-wing supporters who feel that they have not been allowed to commit violence against people they don’t like, at least they have been allowed to engage in extremist conduct.”
Asked about these concerns, the White House rejected NPR’s reporting.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement, “Instead of covering Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights and trying to unfairly convict President Trump, NPR should be exposing the dangerous language from elected Democrats that has emboldened leftists to commit real violence against Republicans — including the recent murder of Charlie Kirk.”
Jackson said stories like this are the reason NPR no longer receives federal funding. “This is something we can all celebrate,” he said.
Trump has also blamed what he calls the “radical left” for demonizing him and his supporters and inspiring political violence.
But many liberals who advocate this story say it is the other way around. they call the president Dehumanizes others with his rhetoric. For example, Trump has said that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” The president has also called his political opponents “radical leftist thugs who live like insects.”
Despite White House claims to the contrary, there is ample evidence that more people are buying guns because some of the administration’s policies scare them away.
“Never seen such a surge before”
“As everyone knows, there has been a huge increase in fear and panic since the election,” said Tom Nguyen, speaking on YouTube at his L.A. Progressive Shooters Gun Club just weeks after Trump’s inauguration. Nguyen said the club’s Pistol 101 classes were already booked nine months in advance.
“I’ve never seen an increase like this before,” said Thomas Boyer, spokesman for the San Francisco chapter of the Pink Pistols, whose motto is: “Armed homosexuals don’t get beaten up.”
Even traditional Second Amendment groups say more liberals are demanding gun training.
“It’s certainly common sense at this point,” said Taylor Rhodes, communications director for the National Association for Gun Rights.
Charles’s daughter, Charlie, practices with her father. The day after President Trump’s election, a man came to his college campus and made racial comments toward black students.
Katie Knazawicz
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Katie Knazawicz
There’s no way to measure how many people are buying guns because the political climate scares them, but the phrase “How do I buy a gun?” According to Google Trends, the number has increased several times in the last year.
The surges occurred around Trump’s 2024 election, his inauguration, the first immigration enforcement operation in January and the day Trump held a military parade in Washington, DC.
This recent increase in gun purchases by liberals is the latest in a trend that has been going on for years. For example, a University of Chicago study found that gun ownership by Democrats or Democrat-leaning people increased by 7 percentage points between 2010 and 2022.
David Yamane, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, says the events of 2020 and early 2021 — the pandemic, the killing of George Floyd and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot — were particularly motivating.
“We know that new gun owners that year were disproportionately African American (and) disproportionately women,” Yamane said.
just for self defense
Like most gun owners, those who spoke to NPR said they would use the weapons only for self-protection and not get involved with law enforcement.
“The language we use is absolutely not about uniting and attacking someone,” says MJ, a libertarian and member of a self-defense group in the Midwest. MJ asked NPR not to use his full name because he feared retribution. “If someone even says something like this, I or someone else will probably kick him out of the group.”
Bill Sacks, director of legal operations for the Second Amendment Foundation, which challenges gun control laws, says he’s happy to see more liberals exercising their right to self-defense — but he’s not happy about why.
“Is it a good thing that people are scared?” He says. “No, not at all.”
Every new gun owner who spoke to NPR said they felt it was extremely impossible for them to defend themselves because of the civil unrest. But he also said that if he ever had to do it, he would regret not having a gun.
“As a man, as a father, as a husband, how careless and negligent would it be for me not to be prepared?” Dr. Charles of Maryland says.