Pirate's Cove

It’s rather surprising that CNN isn’t losing their minds over this

Liberal, female and minority: America’s new gun owners aren’t who you’d think

Several times a week you can hear gunfire echoing from Brandi Joseph’s scenic Southern California property. A licensed firearms instructor and dealer, Joseph decided to open Fortune Firearms in December to serve a growing and rapidly changing clientele.

“There is a huge uptick in female owners,” Joseph said. “Women are getting trained; women are carrying… liberal and conservative.”

Proof of that change pulled up Joseph’s long, dusty driveway in the San Jacinto Valley just before 10 a.m. for a Saturday social, of sorts. A group of seven African American women stepped out of their cars seemingly eager to start their first firearms training session.

“Our society and climate is changing… it’s just better to be prepared for your own safety and protection. That’s how we feel,” Laronya Day, who organized the outing, said.

Especially if you are living in a liberal area where the government enables criminal behavior

“Do you have some friends who would be totally turned off by this?” we asked Charlean Ward. “Absolutely,” she responded. “That’s their choice; I’m exercising my choice.”

Good for you, Charlean. And this could become a big problem for the Democrats looking to band/limit/tax lawful firearms owners and purchasers

About an hour east of Los Angeles, Yessica Mendez and her wife Crisia Regalado met with their instructor Tom Nguyen at Burro Canyon Shooting Park. But Regalado, 25, admits she at first wanted nothing to do with guns.

“Just the sounds… the vibrations of each impact… made me very jittery and shaky and I had to excuse myself out of the range,” Regalado recalled. “I don’t know, it just triggered something inside of me and it made me scared.”

Mendez, 30, was equally disinterested in guns at first. But in recent years she’s felt a growing need for self-protection.

“I’m a Mexican woman in a same-sex relationship; I need to feel safe. I need to feel protected,” Mendez said. “And right now the laws and the things that are going on don’t make me feel safe and don’t make me feel protected.”

It would be great if we only needed firearms for hunting and having fun at the range. Of course, there are always Bad People out there, and Democratic Party policies makes them more prevalent.

“I never intended to become an instructor, but the need from the community was there,” Nguyen said. “And there’s also folks from my own liberal community who see me as, ‘oh you like guns you must be a gun nut.’ But that’s not really it at all.”

Nguyen says his clients are mostly liberal and from all backgrounds, genders and sexual orientations. He prides himself on creating an inclusive student base.

“The more I educate those who are formally anti-gun the more they actually realize that there’s more nuance to it,” he said.

The nuance is that you have the Constitutional Right to a firearm

Both Mendez and Regalado now have their own guns and are working toward getting their concealed carry permits. But they avoid talking about their guns with friends, who they say are firmly anti-gun.

“They’re really not open to understanding,” Mendez said. Adding that she feels more comfortable discussing her same-sex relationship with friends than her guns. “I definitely am more closeted being a gun owner, for fear of retaliation.”

If your friends won’t accept you, then they aren’t really your friends, and don’t believe in the Constitution

Both Mendez and Regalado at first worried about the type of people they encounter at the gun range, many of whom, they say, advertise their conservative politics in what they’re wearing or listening to.

“It’s mostly all men, mostly all white men, older men like 70s, 80s,” Mendez said. “Seeing people looking at us, and kind of just staring… It always makes us more uncomfortable. Because we’re like, ‘oh my God are they going to come and tell us, like, get out of here… you don’t belong here.’”

Instead, they’ve gotten a different reaction.

“They’re like, ‘Hey, you’re doing well, but can I show you something that might help you more?,” Mendez said.

Mendez says not only has it changed her impression of those individuals, but she also believes it’s given some a different perception of people like her.

“When I (came) back the next day, (one of the men) was like, ‘Hey! I saw your wife out there – she looks nice. Tell her I said ‘hi’.”

And right there is a big problem: liberals, mostly the more hardcore, do not think they can be friends, or even friendly, with people who do not have the same beliefs. The Otherize them, and the Others are verboten. Republicans are considered to be Evil. Most Republicans couldn’t care less. We only care if you’re trying to get government to tell us how we live our lives.

The article goes on to note the high rate of purchase by blacks, Asians, Latinos, and that around half of them in the past few years are women. And a goodly chunk are being quiet about it, because they are Democratic Party voters. Good for them. Many Conservatives were originally liberals, who were boned by liberal policies. Like Democratic Party soft on crime policies.

Read: Surprise: There’s A Big Uptick In Women, Minorities, Liberals Buying Firearms »