Last Updated: 06/09/2026
If you would like to donate to the legal defense of Rihanna Kelver, you can find her personal Venmo here.
Another night in Laramie.
“The Constitution gives you the right, as a white man, to have a rifle in your home. The Constitution gives you the right to protect yourself. Why is it ‘ominous’ when black people even talk of having rifles? Why don’t we have the right to self-defense? Is it because maybe you know we’re going to have to defend ourselves against you?”
— James Baldwin, One Day When I Was Lost (1972)
This was not the first time anti trans violence came to Laramie, Wyoming. Whether coincidence or consequence – what hatred does when it goes unanswered has a name here. It has a fence post and a date.
When Ríhanna Kelver hit the ground outside the Crowbar and Grill on the night of September 13th, 2025, that legacy was with her. It sits with the entire trans community, but one can only imagine how heavy it weighs in Laramie.
“I did not go looking for a confrontation.”
Ríhanna Kelver had been there since the late 2000’s and was no stranger within the community. She grew up in Laramie. She attended the schools. Organized in the communities. Laramie is her town as much as it is anyone else’s.
Kelver is not someone who needed to be told what a firearm is. Like so many in the Cowboy State, she learned to shoot as a child from her grandfather. She completed safety courses, and holds both marksman and sharpshooter qualifications from the NRA. None of this is unusual in Wyoming. What’s unusual is what she did with that knowledge. She didn’t typically carry. Not downtown. Not to the bars.
What had changed was the threat. “A stalking situation” had led to a man being kicked out of the bar where she worked. On the night of September 13th she was carrying. It might have saved her life.
“I had stood up and just yelled, ‘Hey, what the fuck?’ And they had all turned their attention even more so towards me,” Kelver told the Reporter. “This was a while ago, so exactly what was yelled at me is kind of mixed up, but the first thing yelled, I remember specifically, was: ‘You heard me, you fucking faggot … And they continue yelling, you know: ‘What are you going to fucking do about it, faggot? Like, ‘I’ll fuck you up,’ and similar threats with … the slurs of ‘faggot’ and ‘tranny.’”
— Ríhanna Kelver, via Jeff Victor, The Laramie Reporter (May 28, 2026)
Having slurs yelled at you is not an unfamiliar experience in our community. Almost all of us have been in that position. What was uncommon was the rapid escalation. Three men crossed the street to meet her. Then she was on the ground.
We’ve all had that nightmare. Rihanna was living it.
The man standing over her was later identified in court documents as Scott Durham. Colorado Springs Anti-Fascists, who have tracked his activity since 2022, document that Scott Durham is the same Patryck Scott Durham who was expelled from CU Boulder after his Patriot Front membership was exposed.
A documented member of the neo-fascist organization, he had published social media posts expressing a desire to shoot up an immigration center and lynch Black people. When confronted about them, he was unambiguous. “I’m not going to apologize for it,” he told the CU Independent.
Just hours after that interview, police were called to his dorm room. Witnesses had seen Patriot Front messages and propaganda on his laptop. He had been communicating with members on Telegram.
Four days later he was no longer enrolled at the university. He legally changed his name from Patryck Scott Durham to Scott Wayne Durham in June 2025.
Three months later he crossed the street toward Ríhanna Kelver.
Ríhanna didn’t know who was standing over her. She knew she was on the ground. She knew there were three of them.
Bars across the cowboy state hear boasts from men in wide brimmed hats testifying they’d react exactly how she did. She drew her legally carried firearm.
Her finger never on the trigger. The safety on. She pulled back the slide and chambered a round. A warning a Patriot Front member wouldn’t miss. Staring down a barrel, Scott didn’t. It worked. He fled.
A coward of a man who boasted about violence online, who thought he found an easy victim that night, had found an armed trans woman ready to defend herself.
The violent escalation was not hers. Outnumbered and in pain, she held the control to make her warning clear and no more. Her attackers fled. She let them go.
What happened next should have been simple. A reasonable person would have had clear expectations. Scott should have been arrested on assault charges. What followed was far from reasonable and it raises an important question: who is the law for, and who gets to defend themselves?
Rihanna Kelver was charged with two felonies. Aggravated Assault. Possession of a deadly weapon with unlawful intent. If found guilty she could face up to 15 years in prison.
Video evidence, per Slate, confirms Kelver was alone, outnumbered, physically assaulted, and left on the ground facing multiple aggressors. The statute is unambiguous in Wyoming. “A person who is attacked in any place where the person is lawfully present shall not have a duty to retreat before using reasonable defensive force” provided they are not the instigator.
Those of us within the Second Amendment community have always held the understanding that laws written to be applied equally are still subject to prosecutor discretion and judicial interpretation. That fear is not evenly distributed.
It has never been the man in the wide brimmed hat who wonders whether the law will work for him when he needs it. It is us. It has always been us.
The question is what we do about it, and who will rise along side us in defense.
Rights are not privileges.
The architecture of permission.
“Attacking trans women, and representing the feared other as a threat to the manhood of the nation, are ways of placing the very idea of manhood at the center of political attention, gradually introducing fascist ideals of hierarchy and domination by physical power to the public sphere.”
— Jason Stanley, Philosopher, How Fascism Works (2018)
What happened that September night in Wyoming wasn’t random hatred. It was the enactment of an ideology.
Scott Durham wasn’t a “good kid” having a bad night. He was a radicalized member of a neo-fascist organization who had glorified violence against perceived enemies. The enemies were minorities, “degenerates.”
The ideology and culture of neo-fascism has demands: physical demonstration of dominance over the designated enemy. Most of us have seen the images of Patriot Front members unloading out of the back of U-Hauls in masks, marching around minority neighborhoods as a show of force. This has never been their end goal.
Less well circulated are the images of the training weekends. The camps. These men consider themselves warriors defending their race and their religion. Marching was never going to be enough.
Outside her bar, Ríhanna Kelver represented an opportunity. Scott could prove himself.
Patriot Front is the sharp end of something much broader. When a state legislature stands up and declares that trans women are a threat to women and children as Wyoming did by passing its bathroom ban in early 2025, it is not speaking into a vacuum. It is speaking to every man who considers himself a protector. It is giving permission. To many, it’s understood as a demand.
Most of those men will never unload from a U-Haul in a mask. But some of them will cross a street.
This prosecution is a frightening escalation that sets a dangerous precedent. It tells the Scott Durhams of the world that their violence is ideologically acceptable.
This isn’t the first time in recent memory we’ve seen this. Daniel Perry was convicted of murdering a Black Lives Matter protester at a demonstration in Texas. The evidence was clear. It took less than two days for a jury of his peers to find him guilty.
In the days after the trial further evidence surfaced of Daniel Perry’s racist motivations and online presence. He compared the Black Lives Matter movement to monkeys. He had been flirting with a 16 year old girl on Kik.
A year later Texas Governor Greg Abbott not only pardoned Perry, he restored his full rights. A man convicted by a jury of his peers of murder not only walks free but can now purchase and own firearms.
There is no mistaking the message. If your victims are the state’s enemies, the state will protect you.
At the federal level we’ve seen this pattern extended further still. Donald Trump not only pardoned those convicted of seditious conspiracy committed in his name, but is moving to hand them millions in tax payer dollars.
We don’t have to guess what these kinds of men, with these kinds of resources, and these messages from those on high will do. They’ve shown us. In Austin. In DC. In Laramie. They will do it again.
The administration is not content to simply reward the violence. They are working to make it easier to carry out. We have reported extensively on the ATF’s changes targeting trans people. While we don’t believe they have reached as far as a blanket ban on trans firearms ownership, their actions will have a chilling effect on the exercise of our rights.
The question asked by Baldwin’s 1972 screen play is being answered in Texas, DC, and now Wyoming. They want us defenseless. We refuse to let that happen.
Rights are not privileges.
From my cold, dead hands.
“So, as we set out this year to defeat the divisive forces that would take freedom away, I want to say those fighting words for everyone within the sound of my voice to hear and to heed: From my cold, dead hands!”
— Charlton Heston, NRA President, May 20, 2000
When Charlton Heston raised a flintlock rifle over his head at the annual NRA convention and spoke those words, he, the NRA and the broader Second Amendment community were reaffirming broad promises made to American firearms owners.
They’ve made millions saying that they’ll be there to defend our Second Amendment rights and selling stickers that say “shall not be infringed.”
The last few months have left many of us wondering if that promise will be kept.
Silence on the ATF form changes targeting trans people. Silence on Ríhanna Kelver. Deafening silence sure, but perhaps not surprising silence.
When Charlton Heston asserted the NRA would set out to “defeat the divisive forces that would take freedom away” he did not know it then, but he described trans rights today. Our government is more divisive than ever and it is wielding its power to strip trans Americans of their rights and single them out for violence.
This is the moment they’ve always fear-mongered about. Situations like the one Ríhanna Kelver found herself in that night are how they’ve justified their entire existence and your membership fees. This is the exact armed citizen situation that their institutional identity was built to defend.
Ríhanna Kelver was as textbook a case as one could ask for. She was a legal carrier. Her safety was on. She never fired. She gave a warning. Stand your ground laws were written with her situation in mind and she behaved exactly as trained. She didn’t even have to fire a shot.
Silence is a position. Silence when fundamental rights are attacked is a dangerous mistake.
“Shall not be infringed” is the common refrain. It’s on bumper stickers for a good reason. The underlying argument it makes is axiomatically true. If you cede that some rights can be infringed for some people, then they’re no longer rights and everything is up for debate.
Today it’s Ríhanna Kelver. It’s the 4473 changes. The principle established by these actions in Wyoming and DC will not stop with her or with the trans community. Precedents set are precedents that last.
We’re not asking the NRA, the FPC, or the GOA to become trans allies. We’re simply asking them to be what they’ve always claimed to be. If they won’t take a stand, we demand an answer to a simple question: why does “from my cold dead hands” have an asterisk?
Arm the Dolls was formed because we did not want to rely on those outside of our community to protect our community. We will keep doing the work. We welcome the action of unexpected allies but we will not count on it.
Rights are not privileges.
The piece we don’t surrender.
“Wouldn’t you rather give it all at once to something real than carve off useless pieces till there’s nothing left?”
— Luthen Rael, Andor, Season 1
Trans people know how to navigate difficult decisions. Our existence is made possible by a decision each of us makes which demands ultimate commitment and faith in ourselves. There’s enviable strength in that.
Whether you should make the choice to arm yourself legally is not a simple one for our community. It carries difficult truths. The law wasn’t written for us and it is actively being bent against us. The answer is deeply personal and may not come easily.
This reality, like the reality each of us has already faced, must be met without flinching. We’re trans. We don’t let other people’s opinions dictate who we are or how we live.
The goal of this prosecution and the changes being brought by the ATF are clear. They want us unarmed. They want us vulnerable. They want to make us feel like the cost of self defense is too high.
They want us to look at what they’re doing to Ríhanna Kelver and decide it isn’t worth it.
We will not gift them that. We must not gift them that.
Our community deserves to live in a world where we are free from hatred and persecution, where we can live as who we are and be left alone to whatever lives we choose to live. It is heartbreaking that world is not now. Meeting the escalating and dangerous truth of our present circumstances is daunting. Sometimes the option we most want to take isn’t an option we’re offered.
It’s better to stand proud of who you are and how you defended yourself than the alternative. Legal defense funds are preferable to having to read more names come our yearly Trans Day of Remembrance.
Ríhanna Kelver made her decision and survived. She’s here to fight this case. As unjust as her prosecution is, we won’t hear her name in November. That matters.
We’ve carved pieces off ourselves our entire lives to please others while we suffered silently. The hiding. Making yourself smaller, quieter, less. We know where that road ends. This piece, our self defense, we do not surrender.
The decision to carry legally is not recklessness or aggression. It is a commitment to the understanding that your life is worth living, that the threat is real, and that you will meet it with everything rather than surrender to it. It is a difficult decision but we’re born of difficult decisions.
Ríhanna Kelver showed us what that looks like. It looks like knowing your weapon, knowing your rights, and knowing exactly what you will and won’t do with what you carry. It looks like a safety on and a finger off the trigger. It looks like a warning given and a threat neutralized. It looks like surviving.
They have spent years attempting to legislate our community out of existence and they have failed. They will continue to fail because you cannot erase the truth of who we are.
We have the tools. Our experience produces a strength of will, an ability to commit fully to who we are and against everything and everyone who says we shouldn’t exist. This fight is no different.
The weight of societal expectations and the persecutions we now face have only built a stronger community than they could have ever imagined. We know how to get through this.
Rights are not privileges.
“Is it because maybe you know we’re going to have to defend ourselves against you?”
— James Baldwin, One Day When I Was Lost (1972)