Coverage of our friends at the Pink Pistols. 

Via SD City Beat:

“Think about the motto, ‘armed gays don’t get bashed.’ There’s a lot of truth to that,” says Piper Smith. “Wouldn’t it be great to see more headlines where, instead of someone getting bashed, you read about some LGBT people who got chased into an alley and instead of getting bashed they pull a pistol and scare them off? Wouldn’t it be great to see more headlines like that?” It’s a question Smith has been asking herself a lot lately.

The El Cajon native who characterizes herself as a “little-L libertarian” has been a proponent of gun-rights and the “self-defense mindset” her whole life.

“When I was growing up, the firearms in the home were always for self-defense,” Smith says. “It was always normal for me.”

Smith, along with her girlfriend Carissa Schmidt, recently started a local chapter of Pink Pistols, a national, pro-firearm organization that, according to its website, is “dedicated to the legal, safe and responsible use of firearms for self-defense of the sexual-minority community.” Smith and Schmidt are more than aware that being pro-gun makes them a bit of a minority within a minority and runs counter to what much of the LGBT community believes. Yet both claim they’ve seen a bit of shift in attitude lately. Schmidt cites recent events as the catalyst for the newfound interest in groups like Pink Pistols.

Read more here.