Gun rights groups are blasting the Trump administration after CNN reported that senior Justice Department officials have been discussing the possibility of restricting transgender U.S. citizens from owning firearms, following the recent mass shooting at a Catholic church in Minneapolis. Although officials described the talks as “preliminary,” critics warn that even floating such a proposal scapegoats transgender people and threatens their constitutional rights.
The internal talks appeared to draw on a theory promoted by conservative influencers and media outlets: that transgender people are mentally ill, and that transition-related hormones negatively affect mental health, making them more prone to violence.
The Annunciation Catholic Church shooter, identified as 23-year-old Robin Westman, killed two children from the nearby Catholic school and injured 21 parishioners. Westman identified as transgender.
Conservatives — who routinely demonize transgender people for political gain — claim there is a “pattern” of transgender individuals carrying out mass shootings. They cite incidents including Audrey “Aiden” Hale, who killed six people at The Covenant School in Nashville in 2023, and Alec McKinney, a transgender teenager involved in a 2019 shooting at STEM School Highlands Ranch in Colorado that left one dead and eight injured.
Conservatives also point to the 2022 shooting at LGBTQ nightclub Club Q in Colorado Springs, where five people — including a transgender woman — were killed. Shooter Anderson Lee Aldrich claimed to be nonbinary, though extremism experts and former acquaintances told NBC News they doubted that claim and suspected Aldrich was “trolling” the LGBTQ community.
Mark Bryant, executive director of the Gun Violence Archive, told CNN that of more than 5,700 U.S. mass shootings since 2013, only five shooters were confirmed as transgender — evidence, he said, that the supposed “trend” is rooted more in conspiracy than fact.
Even if the claims were true, stripping Second Amendment rights from transgender people or those diagnosed with gender dysphoria would mark a dramatic escalation of the Trump administration’s attacks on trans Americans — and an unprecedented erosion of constitutional rights.
Federal law requires a judge to declare someone mentally “defective” before they can be barred from owning firearms. The gun lobby — which overwhelmingly backs Republicans — has also opposed restrictions like “red flag laws” aimed at limiting access for people with mental health issues, meaning any move against transgender gun ownership could spark backlash from Trump’s usual allies.
In his second term, Trump has escalated attacks on the transgender community through executive orders barring trans people from military service, expelling those with gender dysphoria from the Armed Forces, moving incarcerated trans individuals to facilities based on birth sex, and refusing to recognize transgender identity as valid.
A senior Justice Department official told CNN that any proposal to bar transgender people from owning guns would likely face legal challenges — and could be struck down as unconstitutional or discriminatory, since other people receiving mental health treatment are not automatically stripped of Second Amendment rights.
Alejandra Caraballo, a transgender advocate and Harvard Law School instructor, told CNN she takes the reported ban seriously, warning that agencies could use Medicare or Social Security records to compile lists of trans people or those diagnosed with gender dysphoria. She added that such actions could set a precedent with dangerous consequences for other groups.
“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 Second Amendment rights.”
Gun rights groups swiftly rejected the idea of revoking transgender people’s right to own firearms.
The National Rifle Association condemned “any policy proposals that implement sweeping gun bans that arbitrarily strip law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights without due process,” according to The New Republic.
Gun Owners of America posted on X that it “opposes any & all gun bans. Full stop.” In another post, the group opposed “adding any new category of persons to the unconstitutionally broad ‘mental defective’ category,” warning this could not only prevent firearm purchases but “result in door-to-door gun confiscation from that new category of individuals.”
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms also denounced the idea.
“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. “That anyone in the Trump administration would consider such nonsense is alarming.”
Laurel Powell, communications director at the Human Rights Campaign, told ABC News: “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.”
Organizers of the annual Nashville Pride Festival & Parade have launched a fundraiser to help sustain future events after several longtime sponsors withdrew their support.
In an Aug. 20 press release, Nashville Pride said sponsorship revenue is down $270,000 from previous years.
Nearly 40% of the festival's longtime sponsors withdrew support for this year's Pride -- some just days before the festivities kicked off in late June -- according to Nashville Public Radio station WPLN. Among them were Bridgestone Americas, a presenting sponsor for 11 years, and Nissan, which ended its presenting sponsorship after four years.
St. Agatha Catholic School, a Portland-based Catholic school serving grades pre-K through 8, is facing backlash from some parents after rescinding an offer of enrollment to the children of a same-sex couple at the direction of the Rev. Father Luan Tran, pastor of the affiliated St. Agatha Catholic Church.
The family -- who requested anonymity out of concern for their safety -- applied to enroll their children last May, even arranging for one child to "shadow" a student for a day. They informed the school of their family situation.
On July 21, Wilmer Chavarria, superintendent of Vermont's Winooski School District, was detained for hours by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport after returning from a family visit to Nicaragua with his husband, Essex High School teacher Cyrus Dudgeon.
Officers seized Chavarria's phone and computer, separated him from Dudgeon, and interrogated him for at least five hours about his marriage and his job, according to Vermont's alternative weekly Seven Days.
During the interrogation, agents questioned whether Chavarria and Dudgeon were really married and repeatedly asked if Chavarria was actually a school superintendent. In an email to school board members, Chavarria described the experience as "abusive interrogation" and said he was "treated in a manner that is deeply disturbing and unacceptable."
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