Ihioma Bremeus has always had a clear policy in her Boston home about guns: They’re not allowed. Not even toy guns.
So when she signed up for a firearms training course at Spark FM, a community radio station in Mattapan, her kids were shocked.
“I’m not someone who believes in guns,” said Bremeus, “but our president — and this ‘Make America Great Again’ — those things scare me.”
Now she’s planning to get a license — and possibly a gun.
“Every day we wake up, it’s something new,” said Bremeus. “I don’t know where our world is going, I just want to be able to protect my family,”
At gun ranges and firearms training sessions across Massachusetts, people who don’t like guns are learning to use them. They shared concerns with the GBH News video team about an unstable political environment, coupled with a sense that they may need to protect themselves and their families, as motivation for learning how to use a gun.
State records show gun license applications in Massachusetts are at a 20-year high.
And while Pew Research Center data indicates that nationally, most gun owners are male, white and lean Republican, GBH News found evidence in Massachusetts of an uptick in interest in trainings geared toward women of color, members of the LGBTQ community and people who lean politically left.
Ed Gardner runs a national group called The Liberal Gun Club from his office in Newton. He said that after ICE agents killed two protestors last January in Minneapolis, interest in his club spiked.
“They’re freaked out and a little pissed off, and they’re thinking about exercising their rights and protecting themselves,” he said, ”because they’re not seeing a government that’s doing that for them.”
Concern about the federal government was a common thread among members of the LGBTQ community who crowded onto a gun range on blustery March day to take target practice with volunteers from a group called Pink Pistols.
Ross Goyette of Leominster offered a note of defiance after firing off a few rounds: “The state of the world is going insane, so I decided it would be a good idea to learn how to defend myself and my family because I’ll be damned if anyone tries to abduct the people I love.”
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