Sam Koshiol-Wright of Sequeerity helps lead a community outreach event in Minneapolis, Minn., Dec. 4.
Jim Urquhart/NPR
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Jim Urquhart/NPR
The morning after Election Day, Kimmy Hull woke up to find that her inbox had been bombarded overnight.
“There was over a hundred emails from people asking about our permit to carry classes,” said Hull.
Hull, a former private security guard who is also half-Asian and lesbian, has devoted herself to keeping communities of color and her LGBTQ neighbors safe in Minneapolis. Her company, Sequeerity, offers de-escalation services, community defense classes and firearms instruction. But Hull said the post-election surge in clients looking for gun training signals a new feeling of urgency.
“At least half of them are like, ‘You know, we thought about getting a gun, you know, back during the uprising and everything,’ ” she said, referring to the social justice protests in Minneapolis that followed the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, ” ‘and… we wanted to sit back and see what happened. …’ And as soon as [Trump] got reelected, we decided that it’s not about whether they want one or not. They feel like they have to have one.”
Trans people are less than 1 percent of all U.S. adults, but they have increasingly been in the crosshairs of right-wing efforts to limit their rights and public visibility. Between June 2023 and 2024, hate incidents against LGBTQ people more than doubled over the prior year, according to data collected by GLAAD, an LGBTQ media watchdog and advocacy nonprofit. Of those 1,109 incidents, trans and queer people were disproportionately targeted.
And during the 2024 election cycle, Republicans spent roughly $230 million on anti-trans television advertisements, according to data collected by
