"On Wednesday morning, posters suddenly appeared in West Hollywood, California featuring a gay version of the Gadsden Flag featuring a rattlesnake on top of the gay rainbow. The flags also had the hashtag #ShootBack indicating a more proactive approach to gay self-defense.
The posters were attracting attention in front of the Pacific Design Center, The Abbey, West Hollywood City Hall and in front of artist Chad Michael Morrisette's house. Morrisette had covered the roof of his house with 50 mannequins to make a statement about the Orlando shootings.
If one picture is worth a thousand words, the series of posters surely represented an eloquent plea to the LGBT community and other Americans to stand as one (thus the "Don't Tread On Me symbol of the American Revolution), as well as a marked attempt to encourage the LGBT community to eschew their traditional pacifist role and take up arms to defend themselves, in the manner of Americans from the Minutemen of the Revolutionary War to the armed service members who defend American values to this very day."
This will create a rift in the left if this movement takes hold. I have to say I like the idea. I was thinking on Monday that if just one man had been armed at Pulse, he could have dropped Omar Mateen in his tracks and sent him straight to paradise.
Then there's this from FOX 31 in Denver,
Gun sales are surging in the wake of Sunday’s deadly mass shooting in Orlando, Fla. The tragedy is generating new debate over gun control reform and the right to bear arms.
Gun shops typically see a spike in customers after mass shootings. But this time, many are seeing shoppers they’ve never really seen before: More gays and lesbians.
George Horne, the owner of The Gun Room, Denver’s oldest firearms dealer, said Tuesday business is booming at his store.
"For this time of year I’d say its three to four times what we normally have," he said.
Background checks that once took minutes can now take hours. It's a sales surge similar to what happened after Sandy Hook and the Aurora theater shootings.
“We’re not surprised by it,” Horne said.
However, what’s different this time around is the clientele. Mike Smith, a firearms instructor in Colorado Springs, is one of many closely tracking the sudden surge in gays and lesbians buying weapons.
“I think right now because of what happened, people are looking for answers,” he said. “You walk into a gun shop and you expect to see people, frankly, who look like me. I think we forget we’re a country of all people, not just people who fit that predetermined mold.”
The Pink Pistols is a national gun club for gays and lesbians. It saw its membership soar from about 1,500 members on Saturday to 3,500 on Monday.
The whole "Pink Pistols" thing is cute, but really, it's only logical that more gay people would know how to use firearms. We have been in the military and on your police forces for decades. Maybe it's just a case of gay self defense finally coming out of the closet. If so, the nation should welcome it.
The whole country needs to think about shooting back when things like this happen. We cannot be ruled by fear. Shootings like the Orlando incident would disappear or be minimized if perpetrators knew they would meet resistance. I like it.
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