The Pink Pistols
Erik Piepenburg heads off to a shooting range in Cleveland to explore a small but growing trend: gay people with guns
Like many gay men who live in New York, I don’t own a gun and I don’t want to be around one. Even though I’ve lived in urban areas half my life, I’ve never even heard live gunfire.
With guns and gun culture as familiar to me as a Hooters menu, my mental image of a typical gun owner is pure cartoon. I picture a right-wing, violence-prone straight man compensating for a dangerously small penis.
It never occurred to me that the person with the finger on the trigger might be gay. “Gays have been taught that guns are irredeemably evil and that anyone who associates with guns is tainted,” says lesbian gun owner Gwen Patton. “It ain’t necessarily so.” Patton is the national spokeswoman for the Pink Pistols, a group of GLBT gun owners and their straight allies who get together to practice shooting and teach gays gun safety. Although the group keeps no official membership records, there are currently over 30 active U.S. Pink Pistols chapters, with more expected to launch this year.
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