Gay Gun Activists A Growing Force

In 2012, former Google employee Chris Cheng won the History Channel’s reality shooting competition, “Top Shot.” Beating seasoned marksmen, highly trained police officers and competitive shooters, Cheng received a $100,000 cash prize and a professional marksman contract with the show’s sponsor, Bass Pro Shops.

Cheng also happens to be openly gay.

Speaking with Fox News, Cheng explained that History Channel executives only cared about how well he could shoot and represent his season, not about his sexual orientation.

“There is this stereotypical view of the gun community as anti-gay rednecks, but nothing could be further from the truth,” Cheng said.

After his win, Cheng quit his job at Google to become an NRA news commentator and author of the book Shoot to Win: Tips, Tactics, and Techniques to Help You Shoot like a Pro.

Cheng is not alone as a gay marksman and gun rights activist. The Atlantic recently wrote about a host of websites and groups specifically for gay gun enthusiasts, including Big Gay Al’s Big Gay (Gun) Blog, GaysWithGuns.net, and the most established organization, the Pink Pistols.

Gwen Patton, First Speaker of Pink Pistols International, told The Atlantic that the gay community has not been receptive of people like them: “They treat us like we’ve left the reservation because we’re looking at these evil guns, and they don’t like guns, so that calls into question our loyalty to the gay community.”

In a blog post after her interview, Patton also took issue with Ladd Everitt, Communications Director for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, insinuating that threats against gay gun enthusiasts are likely to be from fellow members in the pro-gun community.

“Everitt appears to believe that the Pink Pistols should be afraid of their fellow shooters and believers in the Second Amendment,” she said. “It didn’t take much thought to determine what Everitt meant — that gun enthusiasts and pro-rights individuals are violent bigots specifically because they are pro-rights.”

Despite what the liberal media may preach, being pro-gun does not automatically mean that someone is also anti-gay. People like Chris Cheng and Gwen Patton emphatically prove otherwise.