Pulse: Three Years Later

Gwen Patton, First Speaker Emeritus,
on What Pulse Means to the Pink Pistols

Three years ago, a 23-year-old security guard armed with a .223-caliber rifle forced his way into the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. He then went on to shoot the persons he found inside, wounding 53 and killing 49. He was killed after a three-hour standoff with police. The FBI later officially designated this event as a “terrorist attack”. Unfortunately, because the attacker had considered other nightclubs that were not gay bars, the FBI determined that it did not constitute a “hate crime” against the queer community.

Whether the murderer did this because he hated queer people is, unfortunately, irrelevant. He killed members of the queer community and perpetrated what amounts to our own version of 9/11. It was the largest single attack on queer persons in US history, and people are still mourning the tragedy and the loss of family, loved ones, and friends.

This event stands out for making the Pink Pistols go viral. Reporters called the Pink Pistols hotline at all hours of the day and night; people sent letters of condolences; and still more offered goods, services, and considerations to Pink Pistols members so they might be even better trained and equipped to defend themselves from harm. Thousands of kind offers of training time, ammunition, targets, and even holsters and discounts on the purchase of firearms, poured into the Pink Pistols email account. I was overwhelmed with the sheer volume of input, on the phone practically nonstop for days. I gave an interview to an Australian reporter who had forgotten the time difference and called me at 3AM. Because he was on deadline, I gave him the interview rather than ask him to wait until later.

I had no idea how to deal with the influx of offers of assistance, of training, of discounts. We did have a page that gave links to some trainers, some companies that offered gear, etc. but it was a static page that had to be edited manually. I called for help from the membership, and Erin Palette stood up. She created a spinoff organization that took those offers and crafted them into Operation Blazing Sword. She was, to me, like a force of nature, taming that wild input and creating something tangible and useful from raw chaos.

When in the fullness of time I decided to step down from the day-to-day running of the Pink Pistols, I chose Erin as my successor. It was a mutual decision to re-merge Operation Blazing Sword and the Pink Pistols with OBS coming home to the organization it spawned from. Since that merger, things have gone very well indeed for a young corporation and charity organization, despite the constant need for “herding cats”.

It’s important that we remember why we do what we do. It’s important that we remember where we came from. It’s important that we remember we exist because there are those out there who wish to cause us harm, even kill us. And it’s important that we acknowledge the inadvertent sacrifices of those who suffered injury or were killed.

What we owe to our dead and wounded is a continuing resolve to do two things: prepare ourselves to stop such a thing from happening again, and to someday so change things that we no longer need to do it. We have always reached out to convince people that what sets us apart is overshadowed by that which makes us similar.

We do not achieve acceptance by emphasizing how different we are. Instead, we achieve acceptance by emphasizing how much we are the same. We started at the turn of this century, enduring ridicule by “shock jocks” and “news of the weird” reporters by showing them we were not joking. We have been serious about protecting our own. We have been serious about preparing our own. And we have been very, very serious about mourning our own.

Let us always remember those who were taken from us. Let us always remember those who suffered pain and indignity. Let us always remember those who cared, and those who decided they would not permit it to happen again unchallenged.

Gwen Patton, First Speaker Emeritus

If you are queer and want to learn about guns, we’re here to teach you.
If you are queer and don’t want to learn, we will help protect you.
We are Operation Blazing Sword – Pink Pistols, and we teach everyone how to shoot.
And then we tell the world that we’ve done so.