After a shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic church in August, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is looking into ways to prevent transgender Americans from owning guns, according to a CNN report.
This move would be part of a wave of attacks on the rights of transgender Americans by the U.S. government since the start of the current administration. Other examples are an executive order from President Donald Trump that banned transgender people from serving in the military and the Justice Department’s continued efforts to ban gender-affirming care in the United States.
Police said the Minneapolis shooter, who shot at students attending Catholic school through the church’s windows and killed two children, was a 23-year-old transgender woman who previously attended the school as a child, according to other CNN reporting.
The feeling that hit me when I first was notified about the shooter being transgender can only be described as disappointment. I knew that conservative media outlets would be thrilled to use this event to continue painting their distorted picture of transgender people as violent and immoral.
Despite some Republicans’ efforts to show a link between transgender people and mass shootings, the actual data suggests that no such connection exists. As the CNN article states, “From January 2013 to the present, of the more than 5,700 mass shootings in America, five shooters were confirmed as transgender.” No further explanation should be needed to prove that any correlation between being transgender and being a mass shooter is fabricated and only serves to progress the hateful anti-trans movement being pushed by the U.S. government right now.
The Justice Department is looking to limit the right to bear firearms for transgender people by labeling gender dysphoria as a mental disorder that makes it unsafe for those affected to purchase a gun. The CNN article quotes an unnamed DOJ official as saying that the goal of the proposed ban would be to “ensure that mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are unable to obtain firearms while they are unstable and unwell.”
There are several problems with this idea. First of all, the experience of gender dysphoria is not universal to all transgender people. Simply being transgender is not and should never be considered a mental disorder, and it is only when an individual feels distress and discomfort with their gender assigned at birth that they can be diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Some transgender people may never experience this distress, and it is also possible for cisgender people to experience gender dysphoria. It is important to recognize this distinction and not lump every transgender individual together as having a mental disorder.
Furthermore, a person experiencing gender dysphoria should not necessarily be expected to be violent, and there is no evidence that suggests that there is any sort of connection between gender dysphoria and violence. There are thousands of people around the world who have experienced gender dysphoria and are not a danger to society.
But the most surprising part of all of this, however, is the concept of a Republican government pushing for restrictions on gun rights. For years, Republican lawmakers have stood firmly on the grounds of protecting Second Amendment rights and shooting down any proposed laws that would take guns out of any American’s hands.
It is honestly shocking to see how quickly the Justice Department would ignore its precious Second Amendment to go after a community that they have continuously attacked.
They have met every other mass shooting in the U.S. with disturbing silence, but the second a shooter is revealed to be transgender, they utilize their opportunity to take another shot at transgender people and pretend they care about gun violence.
While I believe that the gun violence epidemic is a massive issue in this country, and you would be hard-pressed to find a policy that restricts gun access that I would not support, making a move like this to prevent a pattern that has been fabricated by conservatives and continuing to promote hatred toward the transgender community is not the way it should be handled.
Justin Dearborn can be reached at
jdearborn@kscequinox.com
