Sex Workers for the Second Amendment?

Since Alex Pretti was shot and killed by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis last month, there’s been a flood of stories about liberals embracing their Second Amendment rights, buying guns, and heading to the range. 

So far that hasn’t translated to any Democrat politicians renouncing their gun control ways, and I’m curious to see if February’s NICS numbers will show any substantial increase in firearm transfers in blue states, but it’s certainly a media phenomenon if nothing else. 

That particular story has been written time and time again in recent weeks, but Minnesota Public Radio found a way to put a new spin on it: focusing on sex workers in Minneapolis who never thought they’d own a gun… until ICE came to town. 

CN is afraid of guns. She’s never imagined herself with a weapon, but on this day she’s holding an unloaded gun as part of a ‘dry fire’ class at the Sex Workers Outreach Project office in Minneapolis, better known as SWOP. She and others in the class are learning how to hold and point a handgun.

She says she has felt more nervous after Renee Macklin Good and Alex Pretti were shot and killed by federal agents last month. Pretti was legally carrying a firearm, which led to conversations around second amendment rights during the surge.

CN’s story is similar to other Minnesotans with immigrant roots. CN asked MPR News not to use her full name out of fear for her safety. Her uncle is an immigrant and was recently detained by agents when they were looking for someone else. She worries her dad and grandma who don’t speak much English will be racially profiled. 

She feels hopeless. This disempowerment has led her to consider learning gun safety. 

“It’s scary, I don’t even know how to put it into words. I feel like I have to protect me and my family and everyone that I love,” she said. “I’ve never been interested in it before. I haven’t been to a range before, but I think knowing the safety behind it is really important. Especially if I come across handling a gun in any situation.”

According to MPR, Sex workers are “people who engage in consensual acts like stripping, dancing or camera work.” The Sex Workers Outreach Project has apparently held self-defense classes in the past, but when they opened up registration for its ““Girls Got Guns” concealed carry permit training, the class was fully booked “almost immediately.” Now, SWOP is planning on hosting a regular “sex worker-only gun club” going forward. 

I say good for them, though I can’t really understand why ICE and Border Patrol coming to town has sparked their interest in the Second Amendment. To me, just working as a stripper is reason enough to want to carry a firearm for self-defense, given the odds of a creepy customer deciding to take an unhealthy interest in them. 

MPR reports that Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension received more than 8,200 permit to carry applications last month; an increase of 74% compared to January 2025. I suspect that for many liberals in the Twin Cities, getting and carrying a firearm has become as much or more a symbolic act of defiance than a practical step towards being able to protect themselves from harm. 

From a Second Amendment perspective, I’m mostly okay with that. My only issue is that I’m afraid the vast majority of these left-leaning gun owners are going to exercise their 2A rights without actually supporting them. 

The GOP has forced liberal gun owners to choose between owning guns *or* a police state where trans people can’t live openly, ICE can kill US citizens & raid your house without a warrant, Palantir’s database will flag you if you protest, etc.

What do you think they’ll choose? https://t.co/aXyO8SA5WY

— Joshua Bailey (@JoshuaBailey184) February 11, 2026

As I told Bailey, the real problem for liberal gun owners is that there’s no place for them in the Democrat Party, not that the GOP isn’t liberal enough for them on other issues. 

I have no problem whatsoever with lefties discovering they have the same right to keep and bear arms that I do. But if they believe that right is important, then they need to be doing the difficult work of combatting the gun control lobby from within the Democrat power structure and working to change the party’s fundamental hostility towards the Second Amendment and its reliance on funding from the gun control lobby.

I’ve written before about the fact that the gun control movement isn’t really an organic part of progressive politics. It’s pro-police, who are always exempt from whatever restrictions are placed on the rest of us. It disproportionately harms working class and lower income Americans through expensive fees and taxes, as well as things like making public transportation “gun-free zones.” It turns the liberal slogan “my body, my business” on its head by declaring you have no business protecting your body from harm, at least with a gun. It’s responsible for putting thousands of people in prison and saddling them with criminal records for purely non-violent, possessory offenses involving firearms.

There are plenty of reasons for progressives to oppose the gun control lobby. And maybe some of these new gun owners on the left will actually become Second Amendment activists instead of just being Second Amendment exercisers. As of now, though, I don’t see much evidence of that happening in Minnesota or any other liberal enclave where the right to keep and bear arms is supposedly getting newfound respect.  

Editor’s Note: The anti-gun left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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