Lara Smith, national spokeswoman for the Liberal Gun Club, says membership has surged since President Trump's election last year. She says people of color and transgender people have sought training after receiving threats in their communities.
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When Charles was growing up in the 1970s in Brooklyn, New York, his mother was so strict that she forbade the use of any toy guns, including spray guns.
“I remember well the summer when my friends had water pistol fights and I couldn’t participate,” he recalls.
He grew up to become a doctor, and now every week he heads to the shooting range in Maryland to practice shooting with his Smith & Wesson .380.
Charles, who is black, says he bought the gun after the Trump administration did things that scared him, including arresting an international student who criticized her university's policies toward Israel and handcuffing a U.S. senator who was forcibly removed from a Homeland Security news conference.
“I'm talking about protecting yourself from a situation where there might be some kind of civil unrest,” Charles says. Like most of the people who spoke to NPR for this story, he asked that his last name not be used for fear of retaliation.
Charles, a doctor from Maryland, was not even allowed to own toy guns as a child. Now he says he's so concerned about his family's safety because of the Trump administration's actions and rhetoric that he trains at the shooting range weekly.
KT Kanazovich
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Charles says he worries that some of President Trump's supporters might one day feel emboldened to attack minorities like him and his family.
“He could send the citizens or the government,” Charles says. “I'm not saying that's what will happen. What I’m saying is that all this is out of the question.”
The Changing Face of American Gun Ownership
For decades, the image of gun ownership in America has been white, rural and Republican, but that's changing, according to gun clubs, instructors, Second Amendment advocates and academic researchers.
They say more liberals, people of color and LGBTQ people have been buying guns for years, especially since Trump's re-election in 2024. This story is based on more than 30 interviews. David Phillips is part of a team of trainers for the Liberal Gun Club, which has chapters in more than 30 states and provides a haven for liberals to learn and learn about guns. The club's membership has grown from 2,700 in November to 4,500 today, he said. According to him, the number of requests for training has increased fivefold.
“The concern is with right-wingers who feel they have been given permission to at least act harshly, if not outright violently, against people they don't like,” Phillips says.
When asked about these concerns, the White House rejected NPR's report.
“Instead of highlighting Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights and attempting to disingenuously blame President Trump, NPR should highlight the dangerous rhetoric from elected Democrats that has motivated the left to commit real violence against Republicans, including the recent murder of Charlie Kirk,” White House press secretary Abigail Jackson said in a statement.
Jackson said stories like these are why NPR no longer receives federal funding. “This is something we can all celebrate,” she added.
Trump also accused what he calls the “radical left” of demonizing him and his supporters and encouraging political violence.
But many liberals who championed the story say the opposite is true. They say the president dehumanizes others with his rhetoric. For example, Trump said that illegal immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” The president also called his political opponents “radical left-wing thugs living like parasites.”
Despite White House claims to the contrary, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that more people are buying guns because some administration policies scare them.
“I’ve never seen such a surge before.”
“As everyone knows, there has been a huge surge of fear and panic since the election,” Tom Nguyen said in a YouTube speech to his Los Angeles shooting club, the Progressive Shooters, just weeks after Trump's inauguration. Nguyen said the club's Pistol 101 classes are already booked for nine months.
“I've never seen an uptick like this before,” said Thomas Boyer, a spokesman for the San Francisco chapter of the Pink Pistols, whose motto is: “Gays don't get hit with guns.”
Even traditional Second Amendment supporters say more liberals are seeking gun training.
“It’s certainly common knowledge at this point,” said Taylor Rhodes, communications director for the National Gun Rights Association.
Charles' daughter, Charlie, trains with her father. The day after President Trump was elected, a man drove onto her college campus and used a racial slur against black students.
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It's impossible 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 of such cases has increased sharply several times over the past year.
These spikes occurred around the time of Trump's 2024 election, his inauguration, the first immigration enforcement attack in January, and the day Trump held a military parade in Washington, DC.
The recent surge in gun purchases by liberals is the latest in a decades-long trend. For example, a University of Chicago study found that gun ownership by Democrats or people leaning Democratic rose 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 particular driving forces.
“We know that new gun owners that year were disproportionately African-American (and) disproportionately women,” Yamane said.
Self defense only
Like the vast majority of gun owners, those who spoke to NPR said they would only use guns for self-defense and would not involve law enforcement.
“All the words we use are absolutely not about banding together to arm and attack somebody,” says MJ, a member of a liberal self-defense group in the Midwest who asked NPR not to use his full name because he fears retaliation. “If anyone ever said something like that, I or someone else would probably kick them out of the group.”
Bill Sack, director of legal operations for the Second Amendment Foundation, which challenges gun control legislation, says he's glad to see more liberals exercising their right to self-defense, but he's confused about why.
“Is it good that people are scared?” he says. “No, of course not.”
Every new gun owner who spoke to NPR said they think it's unlikely they'll have to defend themselves because of civil unrest. But they also said that if they ever had to, they would wish they had guns.
“As a man, as a father, as a husband, how remiss and remiss would it be for me not to prepare?” says Charles, a physician from Maryland.
