I Spent 17 Years Thinking Guns Weren't For Me. I Was Wrong About That.

For seventeen years, I was a progressive parent who did not have guns in the house. That was a deliberate choice. My oldest is seventeen now — which means I made that call before they were born and held it for their entire life. I thought guns were something other people needed. A certain kind of person. Not us.

I'm going to tell you what changed. But first I want to be honest about something, because I don't see it said out loud very often: what kept me from doing this sooner wasn't that I didn't think I needed to protect myself. The real reasons were harder to say. I was afraid of contributing to gun violence if something went wrong — a break-in, a stolen weapon, a moment of bad judgment. I was afraid of being judged by people who think like me, the ones who would hear "I bought a gun" and assume I'd crossed some line, started caring more about firearms than about kids' lives. That fear didn't go away when I finally bought one. I still haven't told anyone I know that I own guns. Not a single person in my life outside of this.

If you're reading this and that hits close — you're not alone in that either.

That belief started cracking when ICE operations in Minnesota made the threat feel immediate and real in a way it hadn't before. I watched people in my community become unsafe. I started feeling defensive in a way I couldn't talk myself out of. And I started reading.

The Liberal Gun Club subreddit is where I found out I wasn't alone in this. Not in a vague, "we're all in this together" way — in a very specific way. People were buying guns for the first time, nervous about it, politically conscious about it, trying to reconcile their values with a decision that didn't fit the version of themselves they'd held for years. What I found on that subreddit was a few thousand people having the exact same moment I was having — at the same time, for the same reasons.

So I went to a gun store.

What Happened When I Walked In

There was a Trump flag flying outside. Big pickup trucks in the lot. I knew before I opened the door that I was not their crowd.

The people inside were actually fine. Nice, even. I wasn't treated badly. But I looked around that store and nothing — not a single thing — reflected me. The aesthetic, the merchandise, the culture on the walls. I was a visitor in somebody else's world. I only felt okay being there because I had someone with me. And that made me think immediately about all the people who didn't have that. Who would have driven past.

As I got more comfortable with my own weapons and started looking for gear — stickers, patches, things that signal who you are — I ran into the same wall. Nothing. The market assumed you were someone else. If you wanted to put something on your range bag or your car or your laptop that said anything about who you actually are, you were out of luck.

So Here We Are

I'm not in a position to open a gun store. But I could do the next best thing: build something that exists for us. Gear that doesn't require you to leave your politics at the door. Stickers and patches and apparel that say what a lot of us are actually thinking.

That's what Sinister Stash is. It's not a reaction to mainstream gun culture. It's a replacement for the part of it that was never built for us in the first place.

If you're the person who drove past the store with the flag outside — this is for you. If you're the person who only felt okay going in because someone came with you — this is for you. If you're still in the "I've been thinking about it" phase and can't find a single piece of gun culture that doesn't make you feel like an outsider — that's exactly who we're here for.

The store is live. The stickers are coming. The range looks different now.

Get used to it.