The federal government’s recent messaging around gun holders has created a deluge of unlikely Second Amendment advocates — including those previously opposed to or disinterested in gun ownership.
Gun groups across the country are seeing skyrocketing requests for firearm training from women, people of color and liberals, according to national gun coalitions and local trainers who spoke with NBC News in recent weeks.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has shot 13 people during immigration enforcement operations since September. But January’s high-profile killings of Minneapolis residents Alex Pretti and Renee Good, both U.S. citizens, have stoked renewed fears nationwide about federal violations of constitutional rights.
Pretti was legally carrying a concealed handgun when he was shot by federal agents after a heated confrontation between agents and protesters. The Department of Homeland Security accused the ICU nurse of “brandishing“ a firearm while “wishing to inflict harm on these officers” — claims contradicted by video evidence. President Donald Trump later said that Pretti, a concealed carry permitholder, “shouldn’t have been carrying a gun.” Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, made remarks on Fox News last week that echoed Trump’s stance, before walking them back in a post on X.
Lara Smith, national spokesperson for the Liberal Gun Club, said it’s been interesting to see a shift in attitudes on the left that appears to be a direct response to comments from government officials.
“Right now, I don’t even have people to send people to for immediate training, because everybody’s booked up so far,” Smith said. “Since the ICE ramp up in Minneapolis," and especially after Pretti’s shooting, "what we’re seeing is an understanding. Not ‘I want to arm up for revolution,’ but, ‘Oh, the Second Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights, and if I don’t exercise my rights, I might lose them.’”
Smith said the Liberal Gun Club is now fielding thousands of new training requests, a volume that’s up twofold or threefold from last year and contains a significant increase in women.
She described the wave of interest in gun training after Pretti’s killing as “unprecedented” in both scale and rationale. Whereas previously, people tended to express interest for the sake of self-defense, she said, now the club is getting inquiries from people who are simply galvanized to think about their Second Amendment rights for the first time.
It’s a trend gun trainers around the country said they’ve noticed since January.
“After the events in Minneapolis, and just the general response towards this current administration, it has been stratospheric,” said Jordan Siemering, who helped form Grassroots Defense, a small company that offers firearm classes in central Iowa. “It’s really much higher. I see people who I would never have expected to have any interest in a firearm at all talking about it.”
Siemering said his group has a reputation for welcoming people he calls nontraditional gun owners: “the kind of people you might not expect to see at an NRA convention.”
The group has noticed a “big jump” in new interest around firearms, especially from women, queer people and people of color, Siemering said. He said that the spike is similar to what occurred after George Floyd’s murder in 2020 — which sparked a nationwide reckoning over police brutality against Black people — but that this wave is even greater.
John Commerford, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, noted that this also falls into a broader rise in firearm ownership in recent years, with more than 26.2 million people becoming first time-gun buyers between 2020 and 2025.
“These new gun owners come from all walks of life, all demographics, and from across the political spectrum,” Commerford wrote in an emailed statement.
A Girl & A Gun, a club of women shooters with more than 200 chapters around the country, published a blog post noting that in January, requests for instructor-led training rose to 52% — the highest level in six months — and that requests for structured, professional instruction increased significantly. Women ages 45–64 made up the majority of new participants.
Club President and CEO Robyn Sandoval told NBC News in an email that many of the inquiries came in the week after Pretti’s shooting.
“January marked a decisive behavioral shift,” Sandoval later wrote in the blog post. “While concern about safety remained steady, motivation evolved. Women were no longer seeking reassurance; they were seeking competence.”
The same trend has impacted LA. Progressive Shooters, which offers firearm lessons in Los Angeles and advertises itself as being a “welcoming and inclusive space” to marginalized communities.
