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After decades of<\/span> political inaction after mass shootings, the Annunciation Catholic Church shooting appears to finally have spurred conservatives into action. That\u2019s because this horrific slaying was the grotesque gift the right had been waiting for: The shooter \u2013 whose diary entries show a troubled young person immersed in extremist, racist online culture \u2013 happened to also be trans.<\/p>\n The Department of Justice is now considering options to ban trans people from owning guns, with senior department officials reportedly<\/a> dedicating numerous meetings to determining precisely how to strip constitutional rights from an entire category of Americans.<\/p>\n The effort is as cynical as it is transparent: in response to one incident of mass violence linked to a trans perpetrator, the government will further vilify trans people as an a priori public threat, while finding new ways to exclude trans people from the class of rights-bearing individuals.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anti-trans zealots have for some time attempted to conjure<\/a> a link between violent crime and trans people. These efforts, however, tend to fizzle because mass shootings in the U.S. are overwhelmingly a cis problem. Across 5,700 mass shootings<\/a> in the U.S. since 2013, only five shooters have been trans. The vast majority shootings are carried out by cis men; the vast majority of politically motivated attacks are carried out by far-right extremists. Yet the Trump administration is scaling back <\/a>law enforcement efforts focused on the very real problem of white supremacist extremism to pour resources into kidnapping<\/a> immigrants \u2013 as well as apparently hollowing out of Constitutional protections for trans people.<\/p>\n One need not be a fan of the U.S.\u2019s twisted devotion to guns to appreciate the danger of an anti-trans gun ban and its stakes for trans people\u2019s standing in this country. Like Trump\u2019s ban on trans people serving in the military<\/a>, any efforts to ban trans people from gun ownership will rely on a dangerous logic with stakes for all trans and gender nonconforming people, gun owners or not.<\/p>\n The military ban rests on the sick premise that there is something inherently untrustworthy or dishonest about being trans that \u201cconflicts with a soldier\u2019s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.\u201d Meanwhile, discussions around a gun ownership ban, according to reports, frame trans identity as a mental illness. (It shouldn\u2019t need repeating, but being trans is not a mental illness; suffering from gender dysphoria without access to gender affirming care, however, can be debilitating if not deadly.)<\/p>\n Justice Department officials told reporters that discussions were only in \u201cearly stages<\/a>,\u201d and any ban proposal would no doubt face legal pushback. The discussions alone serve a purpose, however, in signalling the administration\u2019s commitment to demonizing trans people, and promoting the connection in the public imaginary between trans people and violence.<\/p>\n One need not be a fan of the U.S.\u2019s twisted devotion to guns to appreciate the danger of an anti-trans gun ban.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n According<\/a> to Alejandra Caraballo, a trans rights activist and clinical instructor at Harvard Law School, in order to skirt the Second Amendment, the government would have to declare that \u201canyone with gender dysphoria has a \u2018mental illness\u2019 that makes them a \u2018danger to [themselves] or to others.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSuch a sweeping determination would not only have repercussions for gun ownership but also employment, benefits, access to bank accounts, professional licenses etc,\u201d Caraballo noted on Bluesky. \u201cDeterminations of mental incompetence can lead to the loss of professional licenses such as law, teaching, and medical licenses.\u201d<\/p>\n Caraballo added that such a designation \u201cwould be a means of effectively purging trans people from society writ large and starting the process of mass institutionalization.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, if there is any group in the US for whom the right to armed self-defense should be protected, it is trans people \u2014 particularly trans women of color. Trans people make up around<\/a> two percent of the US population but are at least four times<\/a> more likely to face violent victimization than cis people; trans people are also far more likely to be harassed by law enforcement.<\/p>\n Heavily armed far-right militias have also for years made a habit of turning up to LBGTQ+ events, including family-friendly brunches and library readings, to harass gender nonconforming people. Under Trump\u2019s eliminationist assault on trans lives, anti-trans vigilantism is de facto state-sanctioned. At times, it is only the presence of armed antifascist<\/a> groups at these events that has kept armed fascists at bay.<\/p>\n Most every exception to the otherwise unassailable Second Amendment has been dedicated to further disempowering communities already made vulnerable to premature death by state and vigilante violence. While Ronald Reagan was governor, California passed the 1967 Mulford Act to prohibit the open carrying of loaded firearms in public as a direct response to the Black Panther Party\u2019s patrols against police brutality.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n