Tacticool Girlfriend
On a cold and rainy late-Winter day, I joined Tacticool Girlfriend at a shooting pit
tucked away down some logging roads in the mountains. Tacticool GF has been
creating content for years focused on firearms, providing insightful and invaluable information
on proper handling, training, and safety to tens of thousand of followers.
In a subculture of content oversaturated with patriotic white men, often ex-military or
law enforcement, Tacticool GF offers a unique and refreshing voice.
What follows are photographs and 16mm video of my day spent with her, and a transcript from a
recorded interview between us exploring a few questions around firearms in our current political landscape.
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(March, 2025)
How have your feelings toward firearms shifted relative to the political landscape we’ve been in for the las ten years,
and especially within the last couple months?
I mean I’ll be honest, my position around firearm ownership hasn’t really changed at all.
But that being said, I have seen in other people how they feel it’s necessary and how
their opinions are shifting, and therefore I’m making myself more readily available to at least
try to help folks train and learn to shoot in-person. I’m not doing youtube videos anymore,
but I’m definitely still very active in advising and being an instructor around that stuff.
Gun culture in America has largely been dominated by white, cis men, and you’ve played an important role in
making a lot of people feel like they can become gun owners and train all the same. Do you have any advice
to offer other folks who may feel unwelcome or intimidated to buy a firearm and navigate the surrounding spaces?
Totally, yeah. I feel like the best thing you can do if you’re not feeling comfortable in
these spaces, which is very understandable, is to find people, find community,
and build community with like minded individuals where you can actually carve the space out
that you need for yourself, and when you navigate that space that is facilitated by more right-wing
or mainstream gun culture elements, that you at least have strength in numbers.
That helps a lot of folks walk into gun stores and instead of going alone, go with some friends,
go with other people that are looking to do the same things as you. That generally helps
build a lot of confidence and a lot of safety and yeah, I think there’s just a lot to be said
about the need to build community in general anyway, but especially in the firearm
world where people are generally pretty hostile towards folks from our side of things.
If you could give one piece of advice to people thinking about buying their first firearm, what would it be?
Assess your needs. Let your needs dictate what you get. Don’t just get something because that’s what
you had in your mind around generally being prepared or whatever people tell you. On the other side
of that, once you determine what your needs are, get the thing that is the most practical,
and when I say practical, that means something that obviously fits your budget but also make sure
you’re getting something that is a reliable, proven platform, chambered in a round that is common,
that is easy to maintain, where there’s a lot of parts availability and a good aftermarket to support it.
If I’m going to give you an out of the box answer for a handgun of any kind, Glock is where I would start.
They make all kinds of handguns for all different roles and sizes. Especially for conceal-carry,
this is extremely subjective, but generally I recommend also getting something that’s chambered in 9mm.
That’s going to cover pretty much every base that anyone’s going to generally have when it
comes to self-defense. I just also want to stress that it’s really important to get something with
good aftermarket support because not only do you want easy access to parts to maintain the
gun with, but you want to buy magazines that are widely available and affordable. Glock is always
going to be the most practical in that regard. There are some honorable mentions for other handguns
though: the Smith & Wesson M&P 2.0 series and the SIG (Sauer) P365 series are
solid, just don’t get the P320.
If you’re looking for a rifle, the AR platform, whether that’s an AR15, or an AR10 if you’re looking
to shoot a larger cartridge, those are all going to generally have the best parts availability and aftermarket.
They’re a proven platform and are very common.
Do you have general reflections you’d like to share about the current political climate, an its unapologetic
attacks against trans folks, queer folks, marginalized communities, the environment and the direction we’re headed?
Yeah, we've got a lot of challenges ahead of us. We’ve got a lot of things to be worried and
concerned about. Obviously things are getting more aggressively antagonistic towards a lot of
minorities in general, so it’s understandable that we are living in a very scary environment right now.
On the same side of that, we've also always technically been in this situation one way or another,
so it’s important to take wisdom and inspiration from our elders who came before us because the
struggle’s not new. It’s continuous and everlasting.
So don’t let fear overtake how you act and respond to it, but also obviously be very careful.
Find community. Again, that is going to be the number one way to build safety, security, and prosperity.
