In the wake of the Minneapolis Catholic church shooting, senior Justice Department officials are weighing proposals to limit transgender people’s right to possess firearms, according to two officials familiar with the internal discussions.
The talks, described as preliminary in nature, appear to build on an idea that has gained some currency in conservative media since the Minneapolis shooting that killed two children and injured 21, most of them children, at Annunciation Catholic Church, an attack that police say was carried out by a 23-year-old transgender woman.
Such a move would represent a dramatic escalation of the Trump administration’s fight against the rights of transgender Americans.
President Donald Trump has issued a series of executive orders on the topic, including one barring transgender people from serving in the military and another ordering federal prisons to move transgender inmates to facilities corresponding to their gender assigned at birth.
In addition, the idea of restricting gun rights has long been a red line for conservatives, with many Republican lawmakers and gun rights groups opposing red flag laws and or other policies aimed at keeping guns away from people suffering from mental health issues.
But Justice Department leadership is seriously considering whether it can use its rulemaking authority to follow on to Trump’s determination to bar military service by transgender people and declare that people who are transgender are mentally ill and can lose their Second Amendment rights to possess firearms, according to one Justice official.
Another senior Justice Department official cautioned that any such proposal, should it gain steam, would likely run into legal complications. Millions of Americans have mental health issues and many take medications, but are not a danger to society and therefore cannot have their rights infringed upon.
Federal law requires that a judge declare a person to be mentally “defective” before being stripped of their right to own firearms.
Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School, says she takes seriously this latest effort to target transgender people in the US. The administration, she argues, could try to have government agencies declare people with gender dysphoria as subject to a gun ban and then use other levers of the government, such as Medicare and Social Security Administration, to compile a list of transgender people to be targeted.
But she also warns that the same methods could be used against others.
“This precedent being used against trans people could be used against veterans with PTSD,” Caraballo said. “It’s a slippery slope to make anyone lose their 2nd amendment rights.”
A spokesperson for the advocacy group GLAAD said the DOJ is using the transgender community as a scapegoat.
“Instead of actual solutions, the administration is again choosing to scapegoat and target a small and vulnerable population,” the GLAAD spokesperson said, noting that transgender people are less than 2% of the US population but four times as likely to be victims of crime. “Everyone deserves to be themselves, be safe, and be free from violence and discrimination.”
The vast majority of mass attacks in the US have no connection to transgender people.
From January 2013 to the present, of the more than 5,700 mass shootings in America (defined as four or more victims shot and killed), five shooters were confirmed as transgender, said Mark Bryant, founding executive director of the Gun Violence Archive.
Still, after the deadly shooting last week, some conservative allies of the president quickly claimed that gender dysphoria – the psychological distress and discomfort some people feel when there’s a difference between their sex assigned at birth and their gender identity – is a mental illness that should bar citizens from purchasing a firearm.
The goal of the potential ban, according to the Justice official, is “to ensure that mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are unable to obtain firearms while they are unstable and unwell.”
Because gender dysphoria is included in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, also called the DSM, it is diagnosed as a mental disorder. (The DSM is the handbook used by health care professionals as the authoritative guide in diagnosing mental disorders.)
But the gender incongruence – having a gender identity that’s not the one assigned at birth – isn’t what makes gender dysphoria a mental disorder. Having clinically significant dysphoria around the incongruence is what makes it a disorder.
In a statement, the Justice Department said 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.”
The Justice Department under Attorney General Pam Bondi has launched a broad effort to target gender-affirming care across the country, including sending more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics who have provided transgender medical procedures to minors earlier this summer.
One of those subpoenas, made public through court proceedings, demanded that the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia turn over swaths of sensitive information about its treatments, including patient data like birthdays, social security numbers and addresses.
Bondi has previously advocated for some gun restricting laws. As Florida attorney general, she defended a state law that raised the age requirements for gun purchases in the wake of the Parkland school shooting in 2018.
She also worked on the policy to ban the use of bump stocks – which allow a shooter to convert a semi-automatic rifle into a weapon that can fire at a rate of hundreds of rounds a minute – during the first Trump administration. The US Supreme Court has since overturned the bump stock ban and Florida lawmakers are pushing to lower the age restriction on gun purchases.
CNN’s Isa Mudannayake contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with additional responses.
