I get annoyed by the acronym for the LGBT community continuing to grow until we've reached a point that no one can keep it straight.

No pun intended.

But the LGBT folks have been around for a very long time. These days, though, we hear a lot of rhetoric about how folks are in danger because they're LGBT or some variation thereof. 

So, a lot of folks in these groups are buying guns and learning how to use them.

There's nothing new about that. We've had people from all different communities become gun owners. 

Yet at The Washingtonian, they act like this is something new.

In all our conversations, however, Rachel told me about feeling unsafe or worrying about the safety of people around her. America has never been especially friendly toward LGBTQ+ people, and in recent years their growing cultural visibility and acceptance has sparked a backlash. Radical right-wing groups have harassed drag events, while some Republican politicians and self-proclaimed parents’-rights organizations have portrayed school lessons and library books about sexual orientation and gender identity as pedophilic tools for “grooming” children.

Meanwhile, governments in red and purple states have legislated specifically against trans people ages 13 to 17, who according to recent reports number about 300,000. Twenty-three states ban transgender kids from taking part in sports that align with their gender identities, 22 forbid gender-­affirming healthcare, and nine ban people from using rest­rooms that don’t align with the sex they were assigned at birth.

Violence looms as well. A 2021 report from UCLA’s law school found that trans people are more than four times as likely as cisgender people to be victims of violent crime. One in four trans people polled by the health-policy research nonprofit KFF and the Washington Post said they’ve been physically attacked because of their identity. The FBI’s tally of hate crimes based on gender identity jumped 32 percent from 2021 to 2022—and again, the actual number is likely higher.

Rachel often feels scared to go out at night. “For a lot of us, it feels like we’re living in the years before something really bad happening,” she says. About a year after she came out, she says, she and her mom were arguing about gun ownership. (Mom is not a fan.) Her mother told her fear was just part of what “being a woman is. It is scary.” But Rachel doesn’t want to live that way. Guns, she says, offer a solution.

Here's the part that would probably blow the writer's mind: No one is bothered by Rachel embracing her Second Amendment rights except the anti-gunners. 

LGBT folks have been part of the gun community for ages. Yes, there are some in the community bothered by this, but most people really don't care. If you're a shooter, then you're someone we welcome into the shooting community. If you support our right to keep and bear arms, we support yours.

And hell, I'll support yours even if you don't support mine.

The truth is that anyone who feels they might be the target of a violent crime should consider getting a gun and learning how to use it if they're lawfully able. They should take it to the range regularly and know how to use it in a defensive situation. They should know the self-defense laws in their state.

Nothing about that is controversial. Most of us on this side of the fence would say as much.

This piece seems like it's trying to show a new phenomenon, something that'll shatter the right-leaning nature of the gun community. However, what's going to happen is, in time, these new gun folks are going to get tired of Democrats--their supposed allies in all things--trying to take their guns away.

Either Democrats will need to stop pushing gun control, which is a win, or they're going to lose these voters entirely.

Won't that make quite the article at someplace like The Washingtonian?