In the wake of the Orlando terrorist attack, the worst strike on U.S. soil since 9/11, gay activists are speaking out about why gun control prevents LGBTQ people from protecting themselves.

The Pink Pistols, a gay-friendly shooting club with dozens of chapters nationwide, released a statement on Sunday condemning the knee-jerk gun control efforts many public figures pushed for in the aftermath of the attack at a gay nightclub.

The Pink Pistols gives condolences to all family and friends of those killed and injured at Pulse. This is exactly the kind of heinous act that justifies our existence. At such a time of tragedy, let us not reach for the low-hanging fruit of blaming the killer’s guns. Let us stay focused on the fact that someone hated gay people so much they were ready to kill or injure so many. A human being did this. The human being’s tools are unimportant when compared to the bleakness of that person’s soul. I say again, GUNS did not do this.

The Pink Pistols helps LGBTQ people arm themselves.

“We teach queers to shoot. Then we teach others that we have done so,” their website states.

Armed queers don’t get bashed. We change the public perception of the sexual minorities, such that those who have in the past perceived them as safe targets for violence and hateful acts — beatings, assaults, rapes, murders — will realize that that now, a segment of the sexual minority population is now armed and effective with those arms. Those arms are also concealed, so they do not know which ones are safe to attack, and which are not…which they can harm as they have in the past, and which may draw a weapon and fight back.

As The Federalist reported, openly gay individuals have been on the forefront of the gun-rights cause in Washington DC. The last three major gun-rights victories in the nation’s capitol have been fought and won by gay people.

A gay man who carries a gun for protection penned an editorial for the New York Daily News urging other gay people to arm themselves.

“Legally designated gun-free zones are invitations to killers,” wrote Tom G. Palmer, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, in the editorial published on Monday. “They get to rack up kills among defenseless victims without any effective opposition. There is a reason that they seek out such places: Everyone has been disarmed and rendered defenseless by the gun-control movement.”

Palmer was also the plaintiff in the Heller case and the Palmer case, both of which affirmed the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

“If there had been armed people with concealed carry permits inside the Pulse nightclub, the zealot who had pledged allegiance to ISIS could have been stopped. Dozens of lives could have been saved,” he wrote.