You probably do the same check every time you leave the house: phone, wallet, keys, repeat. But 22-year-old Brenna Spencer can add another item to that list: her Smith & Wesson 380 pistol.

She keeps the small firearm concealed in a belly-band around her middle, taking it everywhere she is licensed to do so in her hometown of Nashville: in her car, in bars and restaurants, in church.

“The majority of my female friends do the same,” she says, referring to women who tuck handguns into waistbands, strap them into ankle holsters and store them in bra holsters on a daily basis. We know this because Spencer is very vocal about it. Earlier this year, she created a storm on Twitter when she posted her graduation photo wearing a ‘Women for Trump’ T-shirt pulled up to reveal a handgun tucked into her waistband. The caption read,“I don’t take normal college graduation photos.” Likes: 116,000. One week later she added the photo on Instagram. Likes: 13,969.

She is not the exception. There are scores of women on social media proudly promoting their right to bear arms. Some of these gun-loving women are becoming influencers too – one online article tells men to follow “the gorgeous gun girls of Instagram” celebrated for their “blend of delicate little lady and deadly machinery”. Each of the women listed in the article has nearly 200k followers.

What makes this gun-toting social posting all the more flippant and bewildering is, of course, the events going on around them. Less than three weeks ago, 10 people were slaughtered at a high-school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, bringing the number of mass shootings in America this year to 101 (that’s almost one for every two days of 2018 so far). And while people are fighting back – an estimated two million people attended the March For Our Lives, spearheaded by the student survivors of the Parkland school shooting – still, it is happening. Again and again.

Why are so many young American women posing with guns on social media?