It’s yet another sign of the country going to hell. We didn’t see this coming, and perhaps we should have. It’s stunning. It’s another thing that will make us cry, because these people (we) felt so strongly and are concerned for themselves and their families, that we chose to make this decision and follow through. It’s not about leaving the country as much as all of us wish we could. No, it’s something else. From yesterday’s AlterNet:
NPR reports liberals and members of the LGBTQ community are buying guns to protect themselves as both the White House and national discourse grow increasingly hostile. “He could dispatch citizens or the government,” one Maryland doctor said of the Trump administration. “I’m not saying that’s what’s going to happen. What I’m saying is none of this is out of the question any longer.” “Charles, who is Black, says he bought his handgun after the Trump administration did things that scared him, including arresting a foreign student who criticized her university’s policy on Israel and handcuffing a U.S. senator who was forcibly removed from a Homeland Security news conference,” NPR reports.
Guns. It’s a volatile subject anyhow. More and more people are *so scared* that they are buying guns. Not for hunting. Not for skeet shooting. Not for competitions. They have been driven by fear to go do something that would have been unthinkable a year ago. And they are scared for their families, so much so that it has overridden the desire to be normal people going about their lives. When all the people like us choose to do that, it just boggles the mind.
Based on interviews with more than 30 sources, NPR reports the face of gun ownership is changing. Once perceived as white, rural, and Republican, gun clubs, trainers, Second Amendment advocates, and academic researchers now say more liberals, people of color, and LGBTQ members have been buying guns and training with them since Trump’s reelection in 2024. Liberal Gun Club Firearms instructor David Phillips said his club has chapters in more than 30 states and its membership has grown from 2,700 in November to 4,500 today. Requests for training, he says, have quintupled.
Lawd have mercy on us. That’s fear for you. That’s terror. Memberships in gun groups. Training. At least they’re (we’re) training. It’s better than the MAGA and redneck ideal of having one to wave around or boast about their collection. We are learning how to use them. Regular smart people like us have made a very, very difficult decision. We had to think about pulling the trigger when another human being is threatening us.
At least we will take the proper precautions. We don’t want to be part of some news article about how someone shot up a school, or our kids were playing with it and shot another kid. That in itself is also terrifying. Afraid for our kids. Afraid that someone will come after us, so our kids won’t have a parent. Just so afraid. Even with this, who knows when someone will decide it’s a good day to shoot up a supermarket, or drive a car into pedestrians just because they can?
When reached by NPR, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson refused to address the communities’ growing fear and attempted to deflect to Democrats. But while the White House is refusing to address the increasing violent rhetoric against the LGBTQ and liberal communities, new liberal gun owners are rolling into firing ranges for training. Bill Sack, director of legal operations with the Second Amendment Foundation, told NPR that he’s glad to see more liberals exercising their right to self-defense – but he’s unhappy with their reason why. “Is it a good thing that people are scared?” he says. “No, of course not.”
In January of this year, who knew that we would be in this situation in our country? There are a ridiculous number of things that have happened to make us so scared. A militia may decide they don’t like the color of our eyes. The January 6 insurrectionists are free, and they were “patriots”. The White House is whitewashing the insurrection. People like Kyle Rittenhouse think it’s okay to go shoot random people. Cops who think it’s perfectly okay to kill someone instead of arresting them. The arrest was the excuse. Stand Your Ground gun laws. ICE raids that may soon be dragging away *regular* white or black, or LGBTQ citizens. They’re already grabbing citizens who just “look” like immigrants. The list goes on, and on, and on. We won’t be able to get our country back to the way it was. Never. It didn’t used to be like this. We weren’t afraid 24/7/365. And it all started in January.
Friends, I know everyone begs you for money. I promise, among all those asking for spare change, we are the smallest and the hardest working. We’re a group of old, disabled people, except for one writer in his mid-50s. The rest of us are in our sixties and seventies, and this is a labor of love. All we’re asking for is the chance to keep telling the truth about Trump and help ensure democracy survives. If you can help, please do. Thank you. Ursula
