Joe Tarr
AJ Basso, one of nine active members in the Madison chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association, practices at a shooting range in Oregon.
Gabe Clemente aims the muzzle of a 5.56 mm AR-15 rifle and then squeezes the trigger.
In a steady, consistent rhythm, Clemente fires off 10 shots at a target in the shape of a torso about 20 yards away, at an indoor shooting range in Oregon. With the deep boom of each shot, a shell casing is ejected and ricochets off the edge of the firing lane.
Clemente puts the rifle down and flips the switch that retracts the target. On the paper, there are nine bullet holes in the circles that Clemente had earlier drawn — meaning one bullet missed the mark entirely.
But the other holes are grouped nicely around the circles. It’s accurate shooting considering that less than a year ago, Clemente was terrified of guns. “I grew up in a pretty anti-gun environment,” Clemente says.
Clemente’s change of heart was inspired in part while trying to form a crisis support group for people who are afraid of calling the police, such as LGBTQ people and people of color. Clemente imagined responding to a home of a suicidal person with a gun.
“In the context of that project, I wanted to learn how to be comfortable removing a magazine from a gun, picking up a gun without just freaking out,” says Clemente, who is a taxi driver.
But Clemente didn’t want anything to do with the National Rifle Association. It was then that Clemente stumbled across the recently formed Socialist Rifle Association, which promotes gun education for self- and community-defense. Unlike the NRA, the group promotes itself to people who consider themselves “working class, progressive, anarchist, socialist, communist, eco-warrior, animal liberator, anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, PoC, LGBTQ-plus.”
When Clemente inquired about the group, there wasn’t yet a chapter in Madison. So, Clemente started one.
AJ Basso, who joined the Madison chapter, has a much different history with guns. Basso grew up in Green Bay in a conservative, evangelical family that embraced gun culture.
He got more experience handling them during a stint in the military, even as his politics were drifting to the left. When his military tour was up in 2015, Basso moved to Madison to attend UW to study public health. Although now decidedly leftist and anti-war, Basso isn’t anti-gun.
He dislikes the narratives that have evolved around guns: conservatives holding gun ownership as a sacrosanct personal right; the left unable to see guns as anything but a threat.
“You’ve got people saying don’t ever get involved with guns because you’re going to be a victim of gun violence,” Basso says. “You’re going to be the victim of gun violence because racist, violent, right-wing individuals [have been allowed] to commit violence without any check.”
Basso joins Clemente at the firing range tonight, supplying all the guns that the two fire. The Madison chapter of the SRA goes to the range once a month, however, other members are media shy and don’t come out tonight.
The group has about nine active members, Clemente says, along with “a handful of people I’m constantly talking to who, because of money or timing, haven’t officially joined us.”
All nine official members are “masculine presenting people,” Clemente says, and there’s one person of color. Two of them — including Clemente — use the pronoun “they.”
Clemente says the SRA is more about forming a community than guns. SRA members from around the country, for example, have pitched in to help pay peoples’ rent. That’s all part of the mission of “community defense.”
“You can contrast that with the NRA where you’re getting flier after flier of ‘please buy this, buy this insurance, give us money,’” Basso says. “It’s constant appeals to money for their lobbying.”
But Basso adds that it’s also just fun to shoot guns. “If you ever play darts or go bowling with friends, there’s that competitive aspect where you’re trying to do well and trying to hit the target,” he says. “There’s some joy in increasing your skill level.”
Civilian-owned guns in the United States: 393 million
U.S. population: 328 million
Percentage of the world’s guns owned by Americans: 40 percent
NRA annual dues: $45
SRA dues: $25
Number of NRA members: “Nearly 5 million”
SRA members: 1,600
SRA website: socialistra.org
This article has been updated to include the number of national members of the Socialist Rifle Association and to note that the Madison chapter goes to the range once a month, not weekly.
