Senior Justice Department officials are reportedly in talks about possible restrictions on gun ownership for transgender Americans.
The Justice Department is considering a proposal that would, following President Donald Trump’s earlier ban on transgender Americans serving in the U.S. military, declare trans people mentally ill in order to strip them of their Second Amendment rights, officials familiar with the matter told CNN.
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The aim of such a policy would be “to ensure that mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are unable to obtain firearms while they are unstable and unwell,” an official reportedly said.
The discussions, described as preliminary, come after the Aug. 27 shooting at Minneapolis’ Annunciation Catholic School that killed two children and injured 21 others. Police say the shooting was carried out by 23-year-old Robin Westman, who was identified as transgender.
A White House official confirmed the discussions to the Washington Post but said that the proposal from the Justice Department is “not on the docket” in the Oval Office. The Justice Department told news outlets that it is “actively evaluating options to prevent the pattern of violence we have seen from individuals with specific mental health challenges and substance abuse disorders. No specific criminal justice proposals have been advanced at this time.”
Latest attack on trans Americans
Such a move would be the Trump Administration’s latest attack on the rights of trans Americans. During his second term, Trump has barred trans people from military service and ordered federal prisons to transfer trans inmates to facilities that match their assigned sex at birth. He also signed an executive order decreeing that the U.S. will only recognize “two sexes, male and female.”
The Administration has also targeted gender-affirming care through an executive order restricting transgender medical procedures. A coalition of 16 states and D.C. filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration in August arguing that the Administration is seeking to apply a de facto national prohibition on gender-affirming care for youth through an intimidation campaign on healthcare providers. As part of that campaign, the Justice Department sent more than 20 subpoenas to medical practitioners who have provided gender-affirming procedures to minors, including demanding confidential data about patients.
Trump Administration targeting trans people on basis of mental illness
In the wake of the Minneapolis shooting, Trump allies and supporters pushed a theory of “trans terrorism” on social media, arguing that the attack was motivated or caused by the shooter’s gender identity—which authorities have shared no evidence of being the case. Matt Walsh, a conservative media pundit at right-wing news site the Daily Wire, posted on X, “when you affirm the perverse fantasies of sick and delusional people—and you do it systematically, at scale—you are creating precisely this kind of catastrophe. It was inevitable.”
Experts have said there is no evidence that trans people are more prone to violence. Of more than 5,700 mass shootings in the U.S. since January 2013, just five shooters were confirmed as transgender, Mark Bryant, founding executive director of the Gun Violence Archive, told CNN. In fact, trans people are four times more likely to be victims of violent crime than cisgender people, according to a study by UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute.
Trump himself has cast doubt on the Minneapolis shooting being linked to the shooter’s gender identity.
“Well, it could, but you know, I do say it’s also taking place with people that were not transgender, you know?” Trump said in an Aug. 29 interview with the Daily Caller. “Generally it’s people that aren’t transgender, so you know.”
Critics warn of “slippery slope”
Gender dysphoria, which refers to the psychological distress a person might feel as a result of an incongruence between their sex assigned at birth and their gender identity, is categorized as a mental disorder in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. However, being transgender is not considered a medical condition or mental illness. Some transgender people do not experience gender dysphoria, according to the American Psychiatric Association, while some cisgender people report experiencing gender dysphoria.
Legal experts and LGBTQ+ advocates have sounded the alarm on the potential restriction.
“The Constitution isn’t a privilege reserved for the few; it guarantees basic rights to all. Transgender people are your neighbors, classmates, family members, and friends—and we deserve the full protection of our nation’s laws, not anti-American nonsense from the White House,” Laurel Powell, director of communications at the Human Rights Campaign, told ABC News. “If rights can be stripped from one group simply because of who they are, they can be stripped from anyone.”
Gun ownership by people with mental illnesses is regulated by state and federal laws, although not all mental illnesses are disqualifying. Restricting trans people from buying guns would either require an act of Congress, or require the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which reports to the Justice Department, to broaden the definition of a disqualifying mental health concern to include being transgender.
Experts have said that any such policy is almost certain to face immediate legal challenges, and that implementing the rule would rely on potential buyers self-declaring as mentally ill or a court determining them to be mentally defective. The federal form required to purchase firearms includes the question, “Have you ever been adjudicated as a mental defective OR have you ever been committed to a mental institution?”
But Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School, told CNN that the Administration could use government agencies, including the Social Security Administration and Medicare, to identify and target trans people. She cautioned that such a rule could set a precedent for restrictions on others with currently non-qualifying mental health concerns.
“Instead of actual solutions, the administration is again choosing to scapegoat and target a small and vulnerable population,” a spokesperson for LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD told CNN. “Everyone deserves to be themselves, be safe, and be free from violence and discrimination.” Transgender people make up less than 2% of the U.S. population.
Gun rights advocates have also decried such a policy.
“I don’t buy that this is real. In the off chance it is, it would be blatantly unconstitutional. And also without any legal basis,” Kostas Moros, director of legal research and education at the Second Amendment Foundation posted on X.
Aidan Johnston, director of federal affairs at lobbying group Gun Owners of America, posted on X, “Anti-gunners have long weaponized the ‘mental defective’ gun ban to include veterans & anyone with a ‘mental illness,’” adding that the legal definition of “mental defective” is narrower than that.