After President Donald Trump took office a second time, WIRED journalist Manisha Krishnan began speaking to leftists—including many transgender Americans—who had decided to take up arms for the first time or were teaching others how to do so.
She spoke to queer firearms instructors, sellers, and gun-content creators who had seen a spike in sales and interest. Many said they feared the administration stripping them of their rights, or that they would be subjected to violence by people galvanized by the anti-trans rhetoric coming from Trump and his supporters. Some of those fears had quickly come true, with Trump issuing executive orders barring trans athletes from sports and trans people from the military, denying people the ability to use their preferred pronouns on federal documents, and denouncing so-called gender ideology as extremism.
In the meantime, the firearms-driven movement to empower people was growing. Krishnan’s reporting led her to a reluctant and unlikely leader: a cis, white gun-content creator named Karl Kasarda. Kasarda, who runs the YouTube channel InRange TV, has some radical beliefs—he’s an anarchist—and others that shouldn’t be radical but are in the heavily conservative US firearms community, like the idea that the Second Amendment is for everyone.
Krishnan spent several days in the Idaho desert at one of Kasarda’s annual Brutality Matches, firearms competitions that marry grueling physical challenges with marksmanship and cosplay. The theme of the event—a workers’ uprising against colonial forces on Mars—speaks to the politics of many in the group, which was made up of fellow anarchists, hackers, polyamorous folks, and trans individuals. Some attendees, including Kasarda, expressed disdain for the Democratic establishment and criticized the party’s inability to meet this moment. This was no Liberal Gun Club meeting.
The event and Krishnan’s ensuing feature revealed a little-known firearms counterculture that is both incredibly welcoming to those who are part of it and very divisive to those outside of it. That division was further highlighted when right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk was shot and killed about seven weeks after the Brutality Match; many conservatives were quick to blame his death on trans people.
