The Justice Department is reportedly looking to ban transgender people from buying and owning firearms in the wake of last week’s Minneapolis shooting at a Catholic church and school.
Department leadership has held several meetings on such a plan, according to multiple news reports. The Washington Examiner contacted the DOJ and the White House for confirmation of the reported deliberations.
If finalized, the proposal would represent a dramatic escalation in the Trump administration’s actions against transgender people. A ban would majorly curtail Second Amendment rights, but some argue it would make sense in the case of those who identify as transgender and suffer from gender dysphoria.
“We’re not playing semantics with words like dysphoria,” a senior DOJ official told the Daily Wire. “We’re talking about trannies, and we don’t think they should have guns.”
Conservative commentators have voiced support for the reported plan to keep firearms from transgender people, pointing to the apparent overrepresentation of transgender-identifying people as perpetrators of similar attacks over the last several years.
“This is absolutely necessary. Americans are not safe [if] completely mentally deranged people can own guns and by default transgenders fit that description. This is a beautiful development and I am glad to see it,” Joey Mannarino wrote on X, also suggesting that transgender people should be kept in “mandatory internment … until we figure out the root cause of their violent outbursts.”
Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk recently suggested that the government should involve itself in rolling back firearm protections for transgender people.
“If you are crazy enough to want to hormonally and surgically ‘change your sex,’ you have a mental disorder, and you are too crazy to own a firearm,” Kirk posted on Aug. 27, the day of the deadly Minneapolis shooting.
The shooter was identified as 23-year-old Robin Westman, a biological male who was born Robert. Westman killed at least two children and injured another 21 people, most of whom were children, and died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
In Westman’s manifesto, the now-dead gunman regretted transitioning from male to female while also blaming Mary Grace Westman, Westman’s mother, for the shooting after she expressed concerns about Westman’s gender identity. She once worked at Annunciation Catholic School, the site of the shooting and subsequent suicide.
Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) called for stronger gun control laws following the shooting, and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey denounced conservatives for their alleged bigotry against the transgender community in raising concerns about the recent uptick in attacks.
“Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity,” Frey said last week. “We should not be operating out of a place of hate for anyone. We should be operating from a place of our love for kids. Kids died today.”
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If a firearms ban for transgender people is approved, it could pose legal complications for the Trump administration.
The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, Breitbart News reported, is consulting officials on the legality of such a ban if it were to be created.