After Donald Trump won the 2024 election, firearms instructor Clara Elliott said her classes began filling up and have been full ever since.
Her company, Arm Trans Women Firearms Instruction (ATW), offers free firearms training to transgender and nonbinary people in Virginia.
On January 20, 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14168, directing federal agencies to recognize only male and female sex classifications and rejecting gender identity as a substitute for sex. The order also rescinded several Biden-era executive orders addressing LGBTQ+ equality. This EO is one of 50 such federal actions affecting LGBTQ+ people across Trump’s two administrations through October 14, 2026. Some of these proposals and policies were later blocked or reversed.
What follows is a lightly edited interview with Elliott and one of her students, physician Mark Ryan, about how they view changing attitudes toward gun ownership in the queer community.