I squeezed the trigger, my outstretched forearms tensed and ready for recoil. It took every effort to hold the performance anxiety at bay and steady my aim. There was kickback — not much, but enough to heighten the thrill of holding a stainless-steel .22 Beretta and to make me acutely aware of the lethality of the object in my grip. I hit just above the target, then fired nine more times, emptying the clip. 

I’ve never lost so much sleep as I have since the election. It’s enough to erode my lifelong revulsion toward guns and gun culture. For a transgender and nonbinary person like me, the gains of the last decade — starting around the time of nationwide marriage equality and trans actress Laverne Cox’s Time magazine cover story — now feel imperiled, an anomalous blip of sexual freedom, like Weimar-era Berlin. Every LGBTQ+ person in America is watching the accumulation of “Don’t Say Gay” laws, book bans, and bills in red-state legislatures that would make being trans a felony. They’re grappling with the anxiety — even paranoia — about where it all leads.

Living in California provides safety, but not enough to keep the night terrors at bay. Even though I’ve been assured not to worry about a federal restriction on hormone replacement therapy (yet), I’ve started hoarding pills anyway. And even though the statistics are clear, and the person I’m likeliest to injure or kill with a firearm is myself, I can’t stop thinking about learning how to use one. 

So a few weeks ago, I logged onto my mostly dormant Facebook account and messaged the Bay Area chapter of the Pink Pistols, a national group that’s been helping LGBTQ+ people defend themselves since 2000. (Motto: “Pick on someone your own caliber.”) It’s a loosely structured organization, but the Bay Area group holds quarterly shoots. Last Saturday’s outing at the East Bay’s Richmond Rod & Gun Club was unusually well-attended. “Normally, we get nine RSVPs and one person shows,” one organizer told me. “This time, we had eight RSVPs and 17 people showed up.”

Over two hours at the Rod & Gun Club, I got four turns in all, shooting the Beretta as well as a revolver at paper targets positioned barely 50 feet away. Behind them stood a sand dune with postapocalyptic stacks of tires supporting a rubber canopy meant to catch any stray bullets. Beyond the dune was the Bay. 

In firing a handgun for the first time, I may have taken the first step toward making myself the tiniest bit harder to kill. However, instead of community, I found suspicion.

Prior to the shoot, I had announced myself in the parking lot as a journalist writing about queer people arming themselves. The Pink Pistols organizers knew I was there, and I promised there would be no photos and nobody’s name would be used in the story without permission.

I hoped that might establish trust with my fellow arms-bearing queerfolk. Instead, most people went out of their way to avoid me for the afternoon — organizers included. Few of them wanted to talk at all, and one insisted the serial numbers be redacted from any photo that depicted guns. 

On the range, the targets were arrayed in a row, with a corresponding row of stalls or shooting bays. Our entire group was crammed into three stalls, with range safety officers in red vests ensuring everyone was complying with the regulations. Near-constant gunfire and the fact that we wore ear protection made it that much harder to connect. Still, a few people were willing to chat during the plentiful downtime. A lesbian nanny named Ketzia Walsh said she’d initially been scared of guns until she went to a Pink Pistols shoot 10 or 15 years ago. These days, she runs a Signal group for queer gun owners. 

Within the overall LGBTQ+ community, is the stigma of packing heat so intense that people need to come out as gun owners? Yes, Walsh said, noting that, “the more people I talk to, the more I realize a lot of queers already have guns and have had them for a long time.”

Others were on a different path. A 30-something trans tattoo artist from Oakland said she had shot a gun for the first time in February, but now, only six weeks later, she owned three. For her, gun ownership was as much about protection as about integration into mainstream society. She was meeting people she might never otherwise meet. “Fox News tells them we’re coming to take their guns,” she said, “but they see you as a person.”

The tactility of disassembling and reassembling weapons appealed to her, as did the way miniscule biomechanical changes affected whether she would hit her target. Shooting guns, she said, “feels kind of like a more edgy, exciting version of bowling.”

No men or male-presenting participants spoke with me. The chattiest person was a 61-year-old butch dyke from Oakland who, when I asked her name, requested to be called exactly that. She’d worked in private security in Los Angeles in the 1980s, an environment so sexist that the only way to succeed was to become a better shot than the boys. A National Rifle Association member in her youth, she now owned a .38 revolver (“standard cop gun back in the day”), an 18-inch barrel AR-15, and a 12-gauge shotgun. Incidentally, she now works in mediation and conflict resolution and described her politics as extremely progressive. 

It had been a long time since she’d fired anything, she said. “And I pray to God I never have to use those guns for self-defense.” 

I asked her if she had any pointers for a gun-curious first-timer. Get a good grip on tactics, she said. “If somebody comes into your home, how do you control them? There’s a whole art to doing that. Learn the California Castle Laws,” she said, referring to the legal doctrine that justifies the use of force when an intruder unlawfully enters a home. “And learn the psychological implications of potentially taking someone’s life.”

That got to me. I don’t need to be persuaded that, in a country where 125 people are killed and another 200 wounded by guns every day, I’m playing with fire by even mulling the idea of gun ownership. I honestly can’t envision myself killing people, even to save my own hide. Even gaming out such a scenario feels like faux-macho stupidity. And I would much rather learn how to save a life than take one. 

I mentioned this to a gay veteran friend who’s also the strongest voice urging me not to go down this road. He said that, having been in combat, you never know how you’ll react when you’re full of adrenaline and being shot at. “I can tell you firsthand, it’s not good,” he said. “Please find another option.”

Just before my fourth and final turn shooting, a shell casing ejected by the person in the adjacent stall struck my bare shin. It wasn’t hot, but it hurt. I shot close to the target anyway. “Pretty good,” my coach said, with a whiff of approval.

I placed his Beretta on the bench for the last time, stuffed my paper target souvenir in my bag, and headed back home to San Francisco. I couldn’t deny that the experience hadn’t been fun — maybe too much fun. The shooting stance felt sexy; the rush is real. Would I go shooting again? Absolutely. Do I want to become some highly trained, cold-blooded killer? Not in the least.

I’m haunted by my friend’s warning to find another option. I would love one. But I don’t know what it is.