Justice Dept. considers restrictions on transgender gun ownership

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is drawing swift condemnation from gun rights groups and LGBTQ advocates alike after floating that it was considering restricting transgender people from owning guns — a move that would all but certainly face immediate constitutional challenges if ever implemented.

The discussions come in the wake of the shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school last month that federal officials have said was carried out by a transgender shooter, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, cautioned that the talks were in the early stages and that no proposal has been finalized.

Even so, that high-level officials in the Trump administration were discussing such an idea sparked fury across the political spectrum. LGBTQ advocates called it misguided and dangerous as the vast majority of mass shootings in the U.S. are carried out by men and do not involve transgender people.

“Transgender people are less than 2% of the overall population, yet four times as likely to be victims of crime,” GLAAD said in an email. “Everyone deserves to be themselves, be safe, and be free from violence and discrimination. We all deserve leaders who prioritize keeping all of us safe and free.”

Since Trump returned to office, his administration has targeted transgender people in several ways, including removing them from military service, scrubbing some federal websites of mentions of them, trying to bar changing the sex marker on passports, seeking personal information on gender-affirming care patients from doctors and clinics, and seeking to bar transgender girls and women from certain sports competitions.

The Justice Department said in a statement in response to questions about the firearms talks that the agency is “actively evaluating options to prevent the pattern of violence we have seen from individuals with specific mental health challenges and substance abuse disorders.” But, the department said: “No specific criminal justice proposals have been advanced at this time.”

Some conservative figures have coalesced around the idea of restricting guns for people diagnosed with gender dysphoria — the unease a person may have because their assigned gender and gender identity don’t match — through a federal law that bars people from possessing firearms if they are “adjudicated as a mental defective.”

“It’s incredibly worrying that that seems to be on the table for them,” Alejandra Caraballo, a transgender rights activist and Harvard Law School instructor. “This is not something that would be that incredibly difficult to do logistically or practically but it would be politically explosive in terms of the backlash of Second Amendment groups.”

Guns rights advocates — including politically powerful groups such as the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America — vowed to fight any proposal that imposes a blanket gun ban targeting a segment of the population.

“The Second Amendment isn’t up for debate,” the NRA said in a social media post on Friday. “NRA does not, and will not, support any policy proposals that implement sweeping guns bans that arbitrarily strip law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights without due process.”

Another gun rights group, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, called the discussions “disturbing.”

“Prohibiting whole groups of people from owning and using firearms because a sick individual misused a gun to harm and kill children is as reprehensible as restricting the rights of all law-abiding citizens because some people have committed crimes,” said Alan Gottlieb, the group’s chairman said in a statement. “That anyone in the Trump administration would consider such nonsense is alarming.”

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Associated Press reporter Geoff Mulvihill in Philadelphia contributed.