When Charles was growing up in the 1970s in Brooklyn, N.Y., his mother was so strict, she forbade toy guns of any kind, including squirt guns.

"I remember vividly, summertime, when my friends would have water gun fights and I couldn't participate," he recalls.

He grew up and became a doctor, and these days, he heads to a shooting range in Maryland each week for target practice with his Smith & Wesson .380.

Charles, who is Black, says he bought the handgun after the Trump administration did things that scared him, including arresting a foreign student who criticized her university's policy on Israel and handcuffing a U.S. senator who was forcibly removed from a Homeland Security news conference.

"What I'm talking about is protecting myself from a situation where there may be some kind of civil unrest," says Charles. Like most people who spoke with NPR for this story, he asked that his last name not be used for fear of retribution.

Charles says he worries that some of President Trump's supporters may feel emboldened someday to target minorities like him and his family.

"He could dispatch citizens or the government," Charles says. "I'm not saying that's what's going to happen. What I'm saying is none of this is out of the question any longer."

Changing face of American gun ownership

For decades, the image of gun ownership in America was white, rural and Republican, but that's been changing, according to gun clubs, trainers, Second Amendment advocates and academic researchers.

They say more liberals, people of color and LGBTQ folks have been buying guns for years and particularly since Trump's reelection in 2024. This story was based on more than 30 interviews. David Phillips is on the training team of the Liberal Gun Club, which has chapters in more than 30 states and provides a haven for liberals to train and learn about guns. He says club membership has grown from 2,700 in November to 4,500 today. Requests for training, he says, have quintupled.

"The concern is about the supporters of the right-wing who feel that they have been given permission to run roughshod at least, if not commit outright violence against people they don't like," Phillips says.

Asked about these concerns, the White House dismissed NPR's reporting.

"Instead of covering Americans exercising their Second Amendment Right and trying to disingenuously blame President Trump, NPR should highlight the dangerous language from elected Democrats that has driven leftists to commit actual violence against Republicans – including the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk," White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement.

Jackson said stories like this one are why NPR no longer receives federal funding. "That's something we can all celebrate," she added.

Trump has also blamed what he calls "the radical left" for demonizing him and his supporters and inspiring political violence.

But many liberals who spoke for this story say it's the other way around. They say the president dehumanizes others with his rhetoric. For instance, Trump has said undocumented immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country." The president has also called his political opponents, "radical left thugs that live like vermin."

Despite White House claims to the contrary, there is ample anecdotal evidence that more people are buying guns because some of the administration's policies frighten them.

"Never seen a surge like this before"

"As everyone knows, there has been a huge surge in fear and panic since the election," said Tom Nguyen, speaking on YouTube to his LA Progressive Shooters gun club just a few weeks after Trump's inauguration. Nguyen said the club's Pistol 101 classes were already booked out for nine months.

"I've never seen a surge like this before," said Thomas Boyer, spokesperson for the San Francisco Chapter of the Pink Pistols, whose motto is: "Armed gays don't get bashed."

Even traditional Second Amendment groups say more liberals are seeking gun training.

"It's definitely common knowledge at this point," said Taylor Rhodes, communications director for the National Association for Gun Rights.

There's no way to measure just how many people are buying guns because the political environment scares them, but the phrase "How do I buy a gun?" spiked a number of times in the past year, according to Google Trends.

Those spikes happened around the time of Trump's 2024 election, his inauguration, the first immigration enforcement blitz in January and the day when Trump held a military parade in Washington, D.C.

This recent surge in liberals buying guns is the latest in a years-long trend. For instance, a University of Chicago study found that gun ownership by Democrats or Democrat-leaning people rose by 7 percentage points between 2010 and 2022.

David Yamane, a professor of sociology at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, says the events of 2020 and early 2021 – the pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot – were particular drivers.

"We do know that in that year that new gun owners were disproportionately African American (and) disproportionately female," Yamane said.

Only for self-protection

Like the vast majority of gun owners, those who spoke to NPR said they would use the weapons only for self-protection and would not engage law enforcement.

"All the language that we use is absolutely not about rallying together to arm and go assault anyone," says MJ, a member of a liberal, self-defense group in the Midwest who asked NPR not to use his full name because he feared retribution. "If anyone even talks like that, I or someone else would probably boot them out of the group."

Bill Sack, director of legal operations with the Second Amendment Foundation, which challenges gun control legislation, says he's glad to see more liberals exercising their right to self-defense – but he isn't happy about why.

"Is it a good thing that people are scared?" he says. "No, of course not."

Every new gun owner who spoke to NPR said they thought it was highly unlikely they would have to defend themselves because of civil unrest. But they also said that if they ever had to, they'd regret not having a gun.

"As a man, as a father, as a husband, how remiss and derelict would it be for me to not be prepared?" says Charles, the Maryland doctor.