‘They Are Packing Heat’: Tucker Carlson Reacts To Growing LGBTQ Gun Ownership

‘They Are Packing Heat’: Tucker Carlson Reacts To Growing LGBTQ Gun Ownership

Harold Hutchison on March 23, 2023

Fox News host Tucker Carlson took note Thursday of growing gun ownership among the LGBTQ community, expressing support for those exercising their Second Amendment rights.

Carlson, a co-founder of the Daily Caller News Foundation, noted that President Joe Biden has repeatedly called for gun control, including for bans on so-called assault weapons, during his time in office, and played several clips.

“‘You don’t need an RA-15 or whatever they call it.’ That’s the head of the Democratic Party speaking very clearly that the party’s position on guns, if we don’t control them, you can’t have them. Every Democrat thinks this as part of the catechism,” Carlson said. “So, you can imagine our surprise, the other day we’re driving through Cambridge in the old hybrid Subaru, adjusting our surgical mask to cover both our nose and mouth, and listening, needless to say, to National Public Radio, the voice of menopausal liberalism. As we’re listening, we hear this. We are going to play it for you, see if you can understand our total shock.”

Carlson then played a Feb. 26 NPR report about “Rainbow Reload,” a New Hampshire LGBTQ gun club, some of whose members wore hats that said “Make Fascists Afraid Again” or “Make Racists Afraid Again,” that met monthly to shoot and train what the report called the “gun curious.”

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“Mass shootings targeting LGBTQ spaces and a rise in anti-trans rhetoric have inspired some queer people to take up arms,” host Eyder Peralta said, introducing the report. “New Hampshire Public Radio’s Todd Bookman joined the monthly gathering of a gun group that sees firearms as key to their own self-defense. And as you might imagine, the story does include the sound of gunfire.”

“They’re packing heat, appendix carrying in more ways than one, watch out,” Carlson said after playing the audio clip. “Wait a second, we thought. This is NPR? National Public Radio? Suddenly telling you that actually guns are good, they’re valuable tools of self-defense, really, against you.”

The Supreme Court struck down New York’s law requiring gun owners to show “good cause” to acquire a concealed carry permit in June in a 6-3 ruling authored by Associate Justice Clarence Thomas.

Carlson played another audio clip of the NPR report, where one member cited protests at drag shows and drag queen story hours as motivation to “learn how to protect myself.”

“To be clear, we are not against people, American citizens carrying firearms, we support it, including trans people, it’s fine,” Carlson said. “But what you’re watching here is not the exercise of the Second Amendment, what you’re watching here is political hysteria, fear being ginned up on purpose with maximum dishonesty in order to get people in a state of agitation.”