It's easy to take our freedoms for granted, especially if that's all we've known. I don't think that's as much of an issue for Second Amendment advocates, given that we're actively working to secure and strengthen those freedoms, but there are a lot of folks out there who don't think much, if at all, about how unique the United States is when it comes to individual rights and liberties.
I'd argue that some of the biggest champions of those freedoms are pro-Second Amendment immigrants, including those who've fled more repressive regimes and have actively embraced their right to keep and bear arms. A new piece at the Washington Examiner shines a spotlight on several of those individuals, including Nayara Andrejczyk, who was always curious about firearms while living in Brazil, but wasn't able to own one thanks to the restrictive gun laws that kept guns out of the hands of the vast majority of citizens, even while criminals obtained and used them with ease.
Andrejczyk said guns were like “the forbidden fruit,” adding that in Brazil, "very few people own guns, legally. And I was just … drawn to them.”
She fired her first shots at a range in Pennsylvania, and said she was immediately hooked.
Soon she was shooting weekly, working at a gun shop, and entering competitions. Today, Andrejczyk is a certified instructor, a divorced mother of two, and the self-proclaimed “Gun Evangelist.”
Stereotypes paint gun culture as America’s most insular tribe: old, white, rural, passing their weapons from one generation to the next. Yet some of its newest recruits are immigrants — from countries where weapons belonged only to criminals or the state, now claiming America’s most contested freedom as their own.
Andrejczyk grew up in Vitória da Conquista, one of Brazil’s most violent cities. “Brazil is lawless,” she told me when we met at Tanner’s Sports Center, the suburban Philadelphia gun shop where she works. When her parents’ store was robbed in broad daylight, the police never came. “They’re underpaid, corrupt. If they do show up, they twist the story and take money from you. Most people don’t even bother.”
Her father, a soldier, kept a shotgun hidden in a closet. She never touched it, but it left a mark. “The right to self-defense is paramount,” she said. “And we didn’t have it.”
Writer Daniel Allott spoke to several immigrants with a mindset similar to Andrewjczyk's, including Russian-born Zaur Nedashkovskiy, who told Allott he got a gun when he moved to the United States, “to make a statement — because I can.”
Born in Moscow, Nedashkovskiy spent part of his childhood in North Ossetia, a region scarred by the Chechen wars. His father was killed in the Transnistria conflict of 1992. What stayed with him was how easily the state could crush its people. “Listen, [Russians] don’t have constitutional rights, so [the government] can put whatever laws they want.”
That perspective shaped his view of America when he arrived in Kansas in 2011 and became a citizen six years later. A Muslim and now a network engineer in New York, Nedashkovskiy said he had little interest in party politics — what mattered was the architecture of limits. “Immigrants often appreciate what others take for granted,” he said. “Because of the Constitution, you can trust the courts, you can speak up whenever you want. That’s why people come here.”
His decision to own a gun came in 2020, when BLM riots convulsed U.S. cities. “It was crazy. Cops couldn’t do anything. People felt entitled to assault other people in the streets.”
Two years later, the Supreme Court’s New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen decision, striking down New York’s restrictive concealed-carry law, gave him an opening. “Why can’t I have a gun? I thought it was in the Constitution. I wanted the government to see that the count of gun owners [in New York City] goes up.”
Principle aside, the reality can feel sharper. “On the subway, when some guy’s waving shanks in your face — of course I’d have liked to have it on me. But I can’t because it’s prohibited. You’re better to have it than not. A lot of crimes happen because perpetrators know you’re not carrying.”
Nedashkovskiy lives in New York, where the gun laws are almost as restrictive as those found in Moscow. He first applied for a concealed carry license in 2022, but gave up after trying to navigate the maze of red tape the city has erected between citizens and their Second Amendment rights. He tried again last year, and was finally approved for his permit in February... but not before hiring an attorney and threatening to sue the NYPD Licensing Division over its lengthy delays in processing his application.
In his conclusion, Allott writes that "America’s gun culture is often cast as a pathology. To these immigrants, it looks more like proof of promise — a nation willing to trust even its newest citizens with the power to defend themselves."
Events like this week's shooting of two National Guard members by an Afghani national admitted to the United States by the Biden administration could very well spark a debate over immigrants and their right to keep and bear arms. In my opinion, though, the debate has largely been settled by the Constitution: we the people have the right to keep and bear arms for a wide variety of lawful purposes, from self-defense to protection against tyranny. If you reside in this country legally, you should be able to exercise your Second Amendment rights, even if you weren't born here.
As Allott has highlighted, some of the fiercest defenders of the Second Amendment are those who've experienced life in countries where the right to keep and bear arms doesn't exist, and our right to keep and bear arms serves as a beacon to those yearning to live in the land of the free.
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