By Nicki Stallard
Orlando Florida, the Pulse Nightclub, 2:00 AM, June 12, 2016. Hundreds of club goers were ending what should have been a fun night out when a traitorous radical Islamist entered and attacked. In three long hours, the killer shot 100 helpless victims. Forty-nine of them died.
As word of what happened spread across the country, before the bodies were even cold, gun control advocates began promoting their “victim disarmament” agenda.
They changed the narrative. They placed blame on homophobic Christians, conservative Republicans and the NRA. They called the Pulse massacre a “hate crime,” downplaying its true nature as a domestic terrorist attack. They ignored or whitewashed the fact that the shooter was a registered Democrat, listed on the FBI’s terrorist watch list. A man who pledged allegiance to ISIS during the attack.
To them, it was all about the gun. In a way, they were right: the slaughter was about the lack of a gun — or guns — to defend innocent life.
After the horror of the The Pulse nightclub shooting, many members of the LBGTQ community finally grasped the truth. Membership in Pink Pistols grew by more than 500 percent. Erin Pallette created Operation Blazing Sword, a non-profit dedicated to bringing together LBGTQ Americans who need firearms training with firearms instructors (who donate their time free of charge).
The American gun community — including conservatives, Republicans and NRA members — stepped-up to help meet the new demand. For the last year, they’ve worked, and continue to work, to arm and train LBGTQ Americans.
Meanwhile, the leadership of the LBGTQ community continues to see guns as the problem, not the solution. The continue to promote gun control as the best way to protect our community against attack. In fact, many “marriage equality organizations” have mission-shifted from promoting equal rights to destroying the Second Amendment.
This opposition to armed self-defense reflects the fact that gun rights is still a minority position in the LBGTQ community. But it’s a growing minority position. Just as 16th century Europeans eventually rejected Church dogma that said the world was flat, more and more members of the LBGTQ community are rejecting the idea that they must depend on others for their safety.
All humans have the right of self-defense, and all of us should be ready, willing and able to use it. That’s the lesson many of us have taken from The Pulse massacre. The more of us that do, the better for us all.
Nicki Stallard is a US Navy veteran, a spokesperson for Pink Pistols and a co-director of Operation Blazing Sword.