Trump DOJ Considers Barring Trans People from Owning Guns: Reports

President Donald Trump‘s Justice Department is reportedly weighing a new policy that would target the transgender community following the Wednesday, Aug. 27, mass shooting at a Catholic school and church in Minneapolis.

CNN and ABC News report that senior DOJ officials are considering limiting the right to possess firearms for transgender people. The alleged conversations, which are still in their early stages, come nearly one week after 23-year-old transgender woman Robin Westman opened fire at Annunciation Catholic Church, killing two children and injuring another 21 people.

If enacted, the policy would be the latest in a string of attacks on the transgender community since Trump entered office for his second term.

Since signing an executive order on Inauguration Day declaring that there are only two genders, the president has had the Pentagon identify and remove transgender service members from the military, as well as ordered federal prisons to relocate transgender inmates to facilities that accommodate the gender they were assigned at birth.

Additionally, in June, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi launched an effort to target gender-affirming care, sending more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics that provide transgender medical procedures to minors.

Despite the reports, it remains unclear if the Justice Department would be able to execute a gun ban for all transgender people.

One senior Justice Department official told CNN that the proposal would likely face legal roadblocks, noting that millions of Americans have mental health issues, but as long as they don’t pose a threat to society, their Second Amendment rights cannot be taken away.

“Instead of actual solutions, the administration is again choosing to scapegoat and target a small and vulnerable population,” a spokesperson for the LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD said, per CNN. “Everyone deserves to be themselves, be safe, and be free from violence and discrimination.”

Transgender people account for less than 2% of the U.S. population, and are more commonly victims of violent crime than aggressors. A 2021 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law — which did not account for the impact of anti-trans attacks in recent years — concluded that trans people are four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime.

“Research has shown that experiences of victimization are related to low well-being, including suicide thoughts and attempts,” Ilan H. Meyer, senior scholar of public policy at the Williams Institute, said when the study was published. “The results underscore the urgent need for effective policies and interventions that consider high rates of victimization experienced by transgender people.”

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Newsweek, citing data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive, calculated that prior to the Minneapolis shooting, transgender people only accounted for 0.07% of the mass shootings recorded since 2018. With Westman factored in, Newsweek notes, the rate of transgender mass shooters still sits around 0.1%.

The Violence Project — which has a stricter definition of “mass shooting” than the Gun Violence Archive, looking only for shootings where four or more people were killed in public — records just one transgender mass shooter in all of its data dating back to 1966.

“As the investigation into [the Aug. 27] shooting unfolds, we ask the public and the media to remember that one person’s actions must never be used to target or stigmatize entire communities,” Ash Lazarus Orr, a spokesperson for Advocates for Trans Equality, said after the attack, per USA Today. “Trans and nonbinary people, in particular, are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.”

After Trump took office, The Washington Post shared stories of transgender people across the country who bought firearms for protection out of fear that they would be targeted.

“Trans people have every reason to be afraid because we are being attacked,” May Alejandra Rodriguez told the outlet in February. “Every single day, another right is lost.”

“What’s happening today among trans people is in the tradition of people demanding their rights and saying that they’re willing to defend those rights with force if necessary,” David Yamane, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University, told the Post.

Additionally, experts told USA Today that there is not an “epidemic” of transgender people causing mass shootings.

Michael Jensen, research director at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, said there’s “no evidence to support the claim that transgender people are disproportionately responsible for mass violence events in the U.S., including shootings in schools.”