Taking the Temperature of the Hard Left Gun Culture at a Brutality Shooting Match

EVEN BEFORE KIRK’S death, right-wing personalities like Andy Ngo were sharing images of trans people taking up arms on social media, implying they present a threat. Following the arrest of Kirk shooting suspect Tyler Robinson, that paranoia reached a fever pitch, with many ostensible supporters of the Second Amendment suggesting trans people be stripped of their arms. “How much do you want to bet we are going to find out there is a Trans terror cell that groomed Tyler Robinson and possibly even provided him with the gun to kill Charlie?” asked MAGA influencer Laura Loomer on X on September 13, following up with a slur. “There are literally shooting clubs now where Trannies meet up to learn how to shoot rifles and they wear shirts that say ‘Kill fascists’ and ‘the 2nd Amendment is for shooting cops.’ They are training for war. It’s very dangerous.”

READER, THEY ARE not training for war. Certainly not at this event.

Instead, I’ve been getting the tea about how Brutality matches are a kink-friendly space from Deviant Ollam, a 48-year-old hacker and guntuber with an “arm trans women” patch above his right butt cheek and “Abolish ICE” stickers he’s handing out freely. Ollam is poly, pansexual, and currently figuring out his status with Gun Bunny. The two of them, who have 180,000 and 22,000 YouTube subscribers, respectively, affectionately hold each other throughout the weekend. Bunny’s boyfriend, who is married, poly, and wearing a “Pro Gun, Pro Gay, A Better Way 2A” shirt, is also here.

I follow Ollam onto a platform about 20 feet up a watch tower to start his challenge—long-distance shooting to take down colonial attack ships on this fantasy version of Mars. But 30 seconds after he pops off a few shots with his rifle, people start shouting “Fire!” They don’t mean gunfire. Ollam’s shots spark a grass fire in the dry, 90-degree heat. It’s spreading fast and wide—huge plumes of smoke blowing into the air—and we all make our way closer to the range’s parking lot as we wait for emergency crews to arrive.

With my reporting plan literally up in flames, I decide to meet with Tacticool Girlfriend, one of the few prominent trans guntubers, at her hotel room in nearby Nampa. Earlier in the day, before the event came to a sudden halt, I watched her shoot targets out of an abandoned school bus with an AR-15, later placing third at that stage. I was impressed by her speed and marksmanship. In the poorly lit room, which she’s sharing with two fellow trans women shooters, her content-creation prowess comes to life. She knows her angles, and that’s harder with a bulky AR-15 involved. She is striking. Her thick, black eyebrows and pronounced cheekbones make her stand out in a crowd, even when her mouth is covered by her keffiyeh, which she wears to hide her identity.

Unlike some of the others, Tacticool Girlfriend, who is also a “straight-up” anarchist, says she’s never felt unwelcome at any shooting events. Her friend, whom I’ll call Nancy (they both ask that I not use their real names), even jokes that they love coming to small towns because people generally don’t “clock” them as trans. But they did get some looks at a gun store, Nancy adds, so they tried to fit in. “As soon as we started talking shit about Gavin Newsom, they got real friendly,” Nancy says. “It’s annoying, because it’s like, yeah, like, you hate liberals and I hate liberals, but not for the same reason.”

— Manisha Krishnan in The Hard-Left Shooters Leading a Gun Culture Revolution