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Assault Weapons Are Banned in Massachusetts. These Leftists Want to Change That.

The Liberal Gun Club, which has chapters in more than 30 states, reported a spike in interest as ICE raids ratcheted up early this year.

Brendan Salisbury is an instructor with the Liberal Gun Club, a national nonprofit headquartered in Massachusetts. He’s one of many left-leaning gun owners in the state.

When Brendan Salisbury’s phone lit up with a notification from Grindr in February 2022, he saw a message from a stranger. It had four words and a photo of his front door.

“Found you, commie faggot,” the message read.

For Salisbury—who had been receiving hate messages on social media for weeks after being quoted in a Vice article as a counterprotester at a Boston “Straight Pride” Parade—the anonymous threat was the last straw. He didn’t feel safe in his own home.

He was going to buy a gun.

“I mean, what was I going to do?” Salisbury said. “Call the police and say, ‘Hey, I got a message on Grindr, and it disappeared, and I can’t show it to you, but I promise it was a death threat?’”

Salisbury spent the next few months getting his license, then bought himself a pistol on Christmas Eve in 2022. Today, he’s an instructor with the Liberal Gun Club, a national nonprofit headquartered in Massachusetts. He’s one of many left-leaning gun owners in the state for whom political tensions are prompting them to arm themselves. Many are seeking to repeal a state ban on assault weapons through an initiative this November.

The Liberal Gun Club, which has chapters in more than 30 states, reported a spike in interest as ICE raids ratcheted up early this year, resulting in the shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

In the first two months of 2026, the group received 2,000 new training inquiries, according to Ed Gardner, the club’s executive director. That’s as many as they got throughout all of 2025.

Gardner describes an “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” mentality that he believes is fueling interest in his organization.

“[Leftists are] afraid, frankly, of their fellow citizens,” Gardner said. “It’s not just the government that you have to be sort of wary of. It’s the people who espouse and champion what the current government is doing.”

Zachary Hobbs—galvanized by the chaos of Trump’s second term—was among those who decided to arm themselves in the past year. He took safety training with the Liberal Gun Club in April.

“I have so much hurt and anger and sadness in what this country has become, and I don’t know what to do with that now,” said Hobbs, a Rhode Island resident.

His partner is transgender, and he’s worried that they might one day become a target of violence. Seeing anti-trans rhetoric swirl in political discourse led him to believe that being physically armed will keep his loved ones safe—or at least help them feel that way.

“I don’t think violence is the way to solve it, but I will admit I’ve been curious about violence as a mechanism to keep my partner safe,” Hobbs said.

For Dana Phillips, a trainer with the Liberal Gun club who is trans, that same worry about targeted violence motivated them to explore guns.

“I used to be deeply, deeply worried about where we were heading as a country, and how we were treating minorities, and how, as a trans person, my safety was going to be directly impacted,” Phillips said.

For years, they had been training in emergency medicine and had become certified as an EMT. That skill felt like enough to protect themself, until the January 6 Capitol insurrection—after which point Phillips began to see guns as a means to safety.

“After J6, I was just like, ‘Crap, the power structures are either actively colluding with this activity or are powerless to stop it when it happens. I feel like I am obligated to start learning this skill,’” Phillips said.

Spikes in membership in the Liberal Gun........

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