The Armed Queers of Salt Lake City was launched in 2021 after a conflict between its founder, former gun control activist Ermiya Fanaeian, and another nationwide LGBT organization that solely sought to promote the Second Amendment among the LGBT community.
Before starting the armed LGBT group that previously lectured college students just miles away from the campus where Charlie Kirk was assassinated last week, Fanaeian was credited by Salt Lake City Underground (SLUG) Magazine as the driving force behind the reestablishment of Salt Lake City Pink Pistols.
Pink Pistols describes itself as “a shooting group that honors diversity and is open to all shooters,” and its website states that the group seeks to create the “public perception” that “a segment of the sexual minority population is now armed and effective with those arms.”
Erin Palette, a spokesman for the nonprofit that operates Pink Pistols, told The Tennessee Star that Fanaeian (pictured above) ceased to represent the organization in 2021.
“There was a University of Utah student, Ermiya Fanaeian, who either restarted or created a Salt Lake City chapter around 2020,” Palette told The Star. “She then began using the Pink Pistols name to promote broader political issues, which violated our rules,” as the group is a “single-issue organization dedicated solely to the legal, safe, and responsible use of firearms by the queer community.”
Palette told The Star, “In 2021, her group and Pink Pistols parted ways; she renamed her organization Armed Queers of Salt Lake City and expanded into broader political activism,” and confirmed, “From that point forward, she no longer represented the Pink Pistols.”
The organization no longer has an active chapter in Utah, the spokesman told The Star.
According to SLUG, prior to starting the chapter of Pink Pistols and eventually Armed Queers of Salt Lake City, Fanaeian worked for the gun control activist group March for Our Lives, which was co-founded by former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Vice Chair David Hogg in 2018.
Armed Queers of Salt Lake City was profiled in 2023 by the Young America’s Foundation (YAF), when it lectured students at the University of Utah on “queer resistance” in 2023, when they were hosted by a socialist group that sought the “termination of oppressive systems,” including both “cis-heteropatriarchy” and “land ownership.”
Just the News reported on Sunday that the group posted images of its firearms training to the social media platform Instagram, but quietly deleted the account two days after Kirk was fatally shot in Utah.
Kirk was assassinated last Wednesday while holding an event at Utah Valley University. His alleged assassin was identified as 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, who lived with a transgender romantic partner. Authorities located a bolt-action rifle and ammunition engraved with antifascist and sexually suggestive language near the site of the shooting.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Ermiya Fanaeian” by Ermiya Fanaeian.Â
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