‘Coming out again.’ North Texas progressives are turning to firearms
Ike Hajinazarian first picked up a gun in November 2022 after his partner suggested going to a shooting range as a way to clear his head. Though he grew up in a very anti-gun Ohio household, he figured why not?
From the moment he picked up the rented machine gun, he was hooked.
“I think there is that little boy in all of us. Hearing a thing go boom real loudly, and having it shake you and whatever is sick,” Hajinazarian said. “That was the model of the gun that they used to kill bin Laden and, I mean, how could you not find that cool?”
Hajinazarian bought his first firearm — a 9 mm Smith & Wesson — a few months later, joining the estimated 46% of Texas households with guns . Since that initial visit, he’s visited gun ranges hundreds of times for the joy of the sport.
Though he looks like most other guys at the firing line, Hajinazarian has an unshakable feeling of being unwelcome. He’s a liberal, first-generation American married to a man.
It’s the same experience a middle-aged man would have walking into a Sephora or a JoAnn Fabrics, he said. No one says anything overtly, but he feels out of place.
When he first became interested in shooting as a hobby, Hajinazarian kept it clandestine.
“I literally feel like I’m coming out again. It is so uncomfortable,” Hajinazarian said. “Guns are just such a lightning rod. People have such strong opinions about them. I grew up in a super liberal nuclear family, a pretty liberal extended family. My circle of friends is collegiate show choir kids. So being into guns is weird and freaky.”
At shooting ranges, the other parts of Hajinazarian’s life became the thing to keep quiet.
“When I would go to competitions or ranges or whatever, I would try to make friends with gun people. And the second that I started talking about something other than guns, like in my life, there was very clearly an elephant in the room, and it sucked.”
He quickly began to feel like there wasn’t a space for him.
“I can only imagine, if I am struggling to feel that confidence, what must XYZ person be feeling?” Hajinazarian said.
Creating a space for minorities and LGBTQ+ folks
So in October, he founded Liberty For All Training Co., a gun education startup that’s LGBTQ+ and minority-friendly. He operates it out of a North Texas shooting range. Hajinazarian wants to hold the door open for the population interested in firearms who don’t necessarily fit the white, Republican male mold.
The creation of Hajinazarian’s company brought people out of the woodwork. It made him realize he’s in fact part of a much larger group.
Ed Gardner, executive director of Liberal Gun Club, said the national organization has seen more members join since January 2026 than in the entirety of 2025. The nonprofit is roughly 7,000 members strong and has chapters across 38 states. The largest are in Texas and California.
New membership surges usually come after significant political or mass casualty events, Gardner said, but never to the magnitude as after Alex Pretti was killed Jan. 24 during the federal government’s immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis. His death occurred a few weeks after Renee Good was fatally shot by a masked ICE agent in the city.
Hajinazarian said the deaths marked an ominous turning point in the nation.
At the start of each training session, Hajinazarian asks his clients why they signed up for the course. He said about two-thirds of them respond with some variation of “Well, with everything going on …”
Political events lead progressives to gun ownership
Ariel Heaton said she worries ICE agents are infringing on Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure. Though guns have always been scary to her, she and her husband decided to buy a gun as a means of protection.
Ariel Heaton said she cried when her husband, Matt Heaton, brought it home.
“We feel like we’ve been forced into this situation,” Matt Heaton said. “In an ideal world, we would have control over guns nationwide, and like other developed countries, not have the unique situation that we’re in as far as gun deaths go, mass shootings, etc. That’s a uniquely American issue, and we don’t want to be the ones that don’t have the means of ensuring our survival and our safety.”
The couple was shocked to find that their left-leaning friends were coming to the same conclusion.
“I mean, the whole Second Amendment was primarily based on the citizens defending themselves against tyrannical government,” Matt Heaton said. “And we see that as what’s happening. So we want to take every liberty that we have to prevent something bad from happening. It’s more than just gun ownership.”
In an effort to be responsible gun owners, they signed up for a session with Hajinazarian after seeing it on a discussion board for liberals with firearms. They said his training course was exactly what they were looking for.
Hajinazarian said he thinks recent political events and notable kidnappings have made more people realize that a large portion of the population owns a firearm, especially in Texas.
The case Hajinazarian makes is constitutional liberties are for all of us, so why not take advantage of them?