The most surprising new gun owners are US liberals

Michael Ciemnoczolowski, a lifelong Democrat, supports stricter gun laws and contributes to Sandy Hook Promise, a gun-violence-prevention nonprofit.

But this summer, the liquor store clerk in Iowa City, Iowa, for the first time in his life bought a gun. Apprehension about street crime, armed right-wing extremists, and “whatever else the world could possibly throw at us,” drove his decision.

“Domestic politics have grown increasingly acrimonious,” says Ciemnoczolowski, 43.

American gun culture has long been dominated by conservative, white men. Now, in a marked change, a burgeoning number of liberals are buying firearms, according to surveys and fast-growing gun groups drawing minorities and progressives.

“It’s a group of people who five years ago would never have considered buying a gun,” says Jennifer Hubbert, an anthropology professor at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., who has researched liberal gun owners.

Historically, it wasn’t unusual for Democrats to own guns, with many more of them living in rural areas. Also, hunting was much more popular. But starting in the early ’90s, gun ownership among Democrats dropped significantly. Increasingly divisive political battles over the role of firearms in American society led the Democratic Party to become an advocate for gun regulation. Republicans became the party of gun rights.

Now, today’s Democrats are rediscovering guns.

A turbulent landscape

Researchers, gun merchants and owners attribute the shift to factors including rising concerns about personal safety and a volatile political climate: GOP presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump warning of “potential death and destruction” if he is charged with crimes, Democrats warning of the potential end of democracy, and two assassination plots against Trump.

Neo-Nazi groups have recently been more active nationwide, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Violent threats aren’t limited to progressives or minorities; conservative and pro-gun rallies have also been targeted.

Twenty-nine percent of Democrats or those leaning Democrat said they had a gun at home in 2022, up from a four-decade low of 22% in 2010, according to a long-running survey by NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan research organization. In 2022, 55% of Republicans had a gun in their home, up 3 percentage points since 2010, the survey of about 3,500 adults found.

In a nationally representative 2023 survey of about 3,000 people by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, about 11% of respondents had purchased a gun since 2020. Among Democratic gun buyers since 2020, more than half were first-time owners, compared with less than a quarter of Republicans, according to researchers who analyzed the data.

And this might be the first presidential campaign where the Democratic candidates are the literal face of gun owners. Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris surprised many during the Sept. 10 debate when she noted, “Tim Walz and I are both gun owners.” (Harris, a former prosecutor, owns a handgun, while Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, is an avid hunter.) Trump, convicted of a felony, faces the prospect of losing his right to possess a gun. He is scheduled to be sentenced in November.

Four decades ago, Democratic gun owners were typically white men, including auto or steel union workers who grew up hunting. Today’s liberal gun owners are much more diverse. Gun dealers saw the largest increase in Black Americans buying guns compared with any other racial group in 2023, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry group. Women accounted for nearly half of new gun buyers from 2019 to 2021, according to the 2021 National Firearms Survey of 19,000 adults, designed by professors at Harvard and Northeastern universities.

Hubbert, the anthropology professor, who received a federal National Endowment for the Humanities grant last year to research liberal gun owners, found that gay and transgender gun owners worried about rising hate crimes and Jewish people feared potential violence from pro-Palestinian groups or individuals. Black gun owners shared similar anxieties, along with mistrust of police in some areas and concerns about crime.

A hidden pursuit

With guns still taboo among many on the left, some new liberal firearm owners say they don’t tell their friends—or even relatives. And they say they don’t want to join, and feel unwelcome in, gun stalwarts such as the National Rifle Association, or online message boards like AR15.com. “We have to have harbors and havens,” said Randy Miyan, who runs Liberal Gun Owners, a 5,000-member group.

In Los Angeles, Tom Nguyen, 54, founded L.A. Progressive Shooters in 2020 as a Facebook group. That year’s social unrest, pandemic and election motivated him to create a place for people to learn about firearms for protection, he said.

Now a certified firearms instructor, he trains 300 people yearly and said his beginner group classes are booked through 2025. “People were hungering for a space that was not this hyperaggressive, male-dominated, toxic gun world.”

Alejandra Mendez, 32, said she decided to take gun classes with Nguyen in 2019 after moving to a new neighborhood. Mendez, who is married to a woman, worries about antigay violence, and crime in general, she said.

She had initial trepidation about visiting gun ranges dominated by mostly older, white men, but found most people there welcoming. Today Mendez, a healthcare worker, owns four guns—three handguns and an AR-15—and completed training for a concealed-carry permit.

Most criticism, she said, comes from some progressives asking why she would ever own a gun. She finds it hypocritical that those critics assert their constitutional right to free speech, but reject the constitutional right to own firearms.

“I don’t understand that rhetoric of ‘protect my right’ and not protect the rights of other people,” she said.

Black gun groups, spanning the political spectrum, are thriving.

The nonpartisan National African American Gun Association has grown to about 48,000 members since launching in 2015. Founder Philip Smith said police incidents and clashes between white nationalists and their opponents in Charlottesville, Va., boosted membership.

Yet Smith, 65, said he has had “heated arguments” in the Black community, where leaders and pastors argue that guns harm their communities.

“They believe the devil’s hand is in all this,” he said. “I respect that. But you have to respect my view as well.”

Jason Carter, 49, who spoke at this year’s Democratic convention, hunts and uses firearms, in the tradition of his grandfather, former President Jimmy Carter. He hopes the influx of diverse gun owners might break America’s calcified gun debate.

“There are more people saying, ‘Let’s look for middle ground,” said Carter, a lawyer and former Georgia state senator. “Let’s work to respect Second Amendment rights, but let’s figure out ways to make us safer.”

Ciemnoczolowski, in Iowa, said he mostly talks about guns with other liberal or progressive gun owners, many of whom welcome gun restrictions. He sees no reason to own a military-style, semiautomatic rifle like the AR-15, and supports universal background checks.

But the country’s sharp partisan divide renders compromise on guns extremely unlikely, he believes.

He visits the range to practice with his Springfield 1911, arriving early, he said, “before the yahoos show up.”

His $600 handgun serves one chief purpose: “Personal safety.”

Write to Cameron McWhirter at Cameron.McWhirter@wsj.com and Zusha Elinson at zusha.elinson@wsj.com