Through the window of a firing range, self-described gay redneck Aaron Stevenson held up a paper target and grinned, pleased with the tight group of bullet holes he punched through the midsection of the target's torso with a .357 caliber revolver.

In the lobby of the range, Stevenson's significant other smiled wanly in response.

"The fact that he's proud of it and wants to show me" is a little disturbing, Ryan Durant said.

Blasting away at a gun range wasn't his first choice for a date, he said. "But I've dragged him to plenty of things he didn't want to go to. He agreed to opera."

Just another meeting of the Twin Cities chapter of Pink Pistols, an organization devoted to encouraging gun ownership and gun rights among the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) community.

Open to people of any sexual orientation interested in self-defense and recreational shooting, Pink Pistols hopes to be partly a social group, partly a gun-safety education provider and partly an advocacy organization devoted to preserving the rights of gays to protect themselves with firearms if necessary. Think of it as alternative sexuality meets the Second Amendment.

"Armed gays don't get bashed," says the motto on the national Pink Pistol Web site, www.pinkpistols.org. "Pick on someone your own caliber." The organization's logo is a pink triangle with a silhouette of a person in a shooting stance.

DEFENSIVE STANCE

The origins of the group can be traced to a March 2000 essay in the online magazine Salon.com titled "Pink Pistols" by writer Jonathan Rauch. Rauch wrote that encouraging gun ownership among gays would dispel the stereotype of homosexuals as weak and defenseless. He argued that gun ownership and training would be a more powerful means of self-protection and self-respect than hate-crime laws or anti-discrimination legislation.

In July 2000, Boston recreational shooter Doug Krick started the first Pink Pistol group and Web site. A news release quickly attracted media attention, and people from other cities wanted to join in. Now, Krick estimates there are about three dozen chapters with about 500 active members nationwide.

Minneapolis resident Nualle Schallenberger said she wasn't aware of Krick when she became interested in writing and distributing a flier advocating gun rights at the 2000 GLBT Twin Cities Pride event. But she saw the Rauch article and agreed with its premise that gay people should not be pacifists when their rights and safety are at stake.

"Freedom and fairness are not given. They are demanded and taken," she said.

The reaction to the flier, however, was underwhelming.

"I got some people who were immediately aghast," she said. "I didn't get a single response. Nothing."

But the idea of forming a gay gun group in the Twin Cities was resurrected about six months ago, according to Robert Odden. He started organizing monthly meetings, has set up a Web site, www.pinkpistols.org/local/tc/index.html and has a couple dozen people on a mailing list.

CONCEALED WEAPONS

Despite the argument that gun ownership will deter gay bashing, some gay shooters said it can be hard to be out of the closet as a gun owner in a gay community where the most vocal voices tend to be liberal and ambivalence toward guns may be higher than in society as a whole.

"It's probably about as easy to say you're Republican," Durant said. He said he supports the Second Amendment but has a "no guns in the house" rule.

"I don't see the need for a general person to have to do this," he said.

Odden, who is a libertarian, said he believes in taking more responsibility for protecting himself. But he said he doesn't own a gun, and his lover wants to keep it that way.

"At this point in time, he doesn't want me to have it in the house," Odden said. "He thinks if someone broke in, it could be used against me."

At a recent meeting of the group, other gay shooters agreed that guns can be the self-defense measure that dare not speak its name.

Brent, an Air Force reservist, said he's had to lie to a former boyfriend about owning a gun because he knew it would upset him.

"The message that has been put out to the gay community by gay leaders and gay press is that gay people don't own guns, gay people don't shoot guns, gay people don't like guns and gay people aren't violent," said Jonathan, a member of the group who said he used to be anti-gun but now is "pro-military, pro-police and pro-gun."

"I think it was an evolving thing," he said, "but I think what really triggered it was 9/11."

GUN COMMUNITY

If some parts of the gay community are leery about gays owning guns, what does the gun community think of a group of gun owners who are gay? What would Charlton Heston say?

"He would say, 'I'm very glad to meet you. Have a seat. Let's talk about things we have of mutual interest,' " said Joseph Olson, a Hamline University law school professor and president of the Minnesota-based Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance.

"We couldn't be more delighted," said John Caile, communications director of Concealed Carry Reform Now, a Minnesota organization that wants to make it easier for people to get permits to carry firearms.

For the gun community, a nontraditional group like Pink Pistols can break down the stigma of firearm advocates as right-wing, angry, white males dressed in camouflage fatigues, Caile said.

The harassment and violence faced by gays also helps bolster the argument for gun rights, according to gun advocates.

"As a typical, middle-class white male, I can't say I'm likely to need a gun for self-defense," said Bob Smith, a straight gun owner who is active in the Pink Pistols group. "We're serious about gays needing the ability to defend themselves."

"People in the gun community definitely feel they have been targeted as the out group," Olson said. "I feel a lot of sympathy for people in the gay community and other groups who suffer the same discrimination."

Mark Koscielski said he keeps Pink Pistol fliers in his Minneapolis gun shop.

"As long as they like guns, we're all the same."