LA ‘Firearms Sensei’ Teaches Guns to Those Who Are Sick of America’s Gun Culture

Tom Nguyen L.A. Progressive Shooters
Tom Nguyen of L.A. Progressive Shooters (via LinkedIn)

At least two hours have gone by in the Pistol 101 class, and no student has fired a bullet or even picked up a gun.

This isn’t a lesson for anyone eager to pull the trigger. Tom Nguyen’s teaching style is patient, aimed at demystifying an object many of his students have spent their lives fearing, even hating.

Something of a leftist firearms whisperer, Nguyen pokes fun at stereotypical American gun culture, mocking “alpha male” behavior and the John Wick film franchise with its video game levels of violence. Owning a gun doesn’t have to define your personality, he preaches, and it doesn’t mean you have to seek conflict.

“Being peaceful,” he says, “is not the same as being helpless, or harmless.”

A wiry longtime martial arts practitioner who sometimes wears his hair in long pigtail braids, the 53-year-old Nguyen plays the role of firearms sensei. But unlike the “gun fu” on display in the Wick franchise, Nguyen teaches form and thought over sudden bursts of close-quarters violence. Lessons often touch on focus and intention. …

“You can come as you are, and you don’t gotta bite your tongue and pretend you’re someone else that you’re not,” he says. “I already knew I was turning off the majority of the gun world, but that’s not who I’m here to serve.”

While he rejects what he describes as stereotypical American gun culture — a nationalistic, conservative space with little room for diversity of thought or appearance — Nguyen says he’s also trying to dispel the inherent disgust some left-leaning friends have for firearms.

“It’s always like a dirty secret. I always feel like, before 2020, being a gun owner in liberal progressive spaces was like being in the closet,” he says. “Like you didn’t want people to know you had a gun because you would be judged or looked at a certain way. Like, is there something wrong with you?” 

— James Queally in At ‘L.A. Progressive Shooters,’ a Gun Space for People Sick of American Gun Culture

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13 thoughts on “LA ‘Firearms Sensei’ Teaches Guns to Those Who Are Sick of America’s Gun Culture”

  1. California, the land that was firsthand witness to the Democrat party putting their neighbors in concentration camps to steal family owned farms as “abandoned” so they could be auctioned off for pennies on the dollar to the big agriculture concerns that donated to them, but kept voting for them anyways.

  2. It’s not about guns, it’s about mindset. The difference between progressives gun owners and conservatives gun owners is that the progressive gun owner will happily surrender their guns and freedom to their slave masters in the government when told to do so.

    1. Yep. From the article:

      Some of his students, like Quezada and Shrieves, adhere to classic liberal stances on firearms: They support an assault weapons ban and believe ownership should be strictly regulated. But in a world where Quezada sees her political opposites as increasingly racist and hostile, she’d rather be able to protect herself.

      There is only one race that is acceptable to be racist against in the USA: white people. It’s actually encouraged at every level of society. Liberals are delusional. Propaganda still works. Hispanics, blacks, and Asians are less likely to be killed by white people than their own race or one other race.

  3. This image of American Gun Culture they keep rebelling against is largely fictitious belonging exclusively to movies, music and games. Sure, there is an occasional moron who tries to emulate the fiction just as with any other image, scene or corporate avatar but for the most part it’s all just normal people doing normal things.

    I’ve take a shit ton of classes from NRA basics to SWAT LARPing at large facilities that train military and police and not once have I encountered some Hummer driving wannabe 80’s action star instructor. A few jerkoff students here and there but not instructors.

    Californians should really visit places outside of California once in a while. Places that aren’t just microcosms of more California bullshit.

  4. Makes me think of one of those infomercials that plays at 2AM. Sounds good but is lacking in real substance.

    1. SAFEupstateFML

      Realistically infomercials achieve some goals in their target market and given who would likely take/need this type of class infomercial may be a perfect description for presentation and audience.

  5. Among the students paying rapt attention inside a Norwalk martial arts studio is 42-year-old Nikki Shrieves, who wears a sweatshirt with “decolonize” written on the back over and over again, each iteration a different color of the Pride flag.

    LOL

  6. .40 cal Booger

    “Nguyen teaches form and thought over sudden bursts of close-quarters violence.”

    Considering that almost 90% of imminent self/home/others defense is composed of “sudden bursts of close-quarters violence” because its required for such DGU, Nguyen is gonna get some of his ‘progressive liberal gun haters’ killed but no great loss there if they choose to go with this make believe zen idiot.

    1. SAFEupstateFML

      Rule 1 have a gun…….. gotta start somewhere and they may be still figuring out they need shoes to run the race.

  7. .40 cal Booger

    “Nguyen teaches form and thought over sudden bursts of close-quarters violence.”

    “Feel the gun, be the gun, deep cleansing breath, now chant OMMMNMMMM”

    You liberal progressives listening to this guy….you go ahead and listen to this guy and do what he says. But don’t complain that he is going to get you killed in an actual defensive gun use encounter because they are only and completely “sudden bursts of close-quarters violence.”

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