Gunfire rattles steadily around the Austin Rifle Club, a private gun range on the outskirts of Texas' metropolitan capital. Among the pick-up trucks and camo-wearing gun enthusiasts, a young woman in a light plaid top and sandals leans forward with a pistol, her arms and knees bent. She pulls the trigger, steady and confident. As she fires, her target—a poster of a zombie hipster waving an iPhone and a purse dog—perforates with a tight, consistent grouping.The 28-year-old woman, Reina Mercado, holds fire as her friend and instructor, Sarah Rossig, walks her through reloading the handgun under speed and pressure. It's the kind of work that combat shooters practice constantly, but it's less common at a range full of weekend target-plinkers like this one. It's even less common to see shooters like Mercado at the range. Mercado is a transgender woman who immigrated from the Philippines when she was 6 years old. She went from making toy guns out of scrap on a family farm to Houston, Texas, deep in the heart of gun culture and oil money.Mercado represents a new and unlikely set of players in the gun culture that dominates America in general and Texas in particular. They're young, liberal, and many are members of the LGBT community. They're not the kind of people you think of when you think of gun rights advocates, but after watching Donald Trump's rise to power during the 2016 election, they're all ready to exercise their second amendment right to bear arms.Continue reading on Motherboard.
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