Senior Justice Department officials in the Trump administration are mulling a weapons ban that would single out transgender Americans.
The proposal would limit transgender people’s right to possess firearms, two officials familiar with the internal discussions told CNN.
The discussions, first reported by the Daily Wire, are using last week’s deadly church shooting in Minneapolis as a launch point, the officials told the outlet.
A DOJ spokesman told the Wire a “range of options” is on the table.
“Under Attorney General Bondi’s leadership this Department of Justice is actively considering a range of options to prevent mentally unstable individuals from committing acts of violence, especially at schools,” the spokesman told the outlet.
The horrific event that killed two children and injured 21 at Annunciation Catholic Church was carried out by 23-year-old Robin Westman, who is reported to have been born male but identified as a woman.
Right-wing influencers were quick to claim that Westman’s motive to kill stemmed from being trans—and the Trump administration appears to be seizing on that narrative as part of its broader assault on transgender Americans. Within days of Trump’s return to office, he signed executive orders banning trans people from serving in the military, declaring the government would only recognize two genders, and scrubbed all mention of trans Americans from federal websites—among countless other declarations.
The onslaught has only ramped up—just last week, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Fox News that studies were being conducted on a possible link between medications “for gender transitions” and violence.
There is no correlation between anti-depressants or medications used by transgender people and violence, research shows.
In 2023, the Gun Violence Archive found that of all mass shootings over the previous decade, only 0.11% had been carried out by transgender suspects.
For years, far-right figures have made baseless claims linking transgender people to violent crime, according to MediaMatters, a think tank that monitors misinformation. As Donald Trump helped bring these fringe voices into the mainstream, those false accusations followed.
After the June assassination of Democratic State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband in Minnesota, Donald Trump Jr. falsely claimed the violent offender had ties to the trans community.
”The radical transgender movement is per capita the most violent domestic terror threat if not in America, probably the entire world,” he said.
In 2023, far-right conspiracist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X that the man who allegedly killed five people during July 4th celebrations in Philadelphia was trans, when he was, in fact, a Trump supporter and gun rights advocate.
And almost a year ago, MAGA-influencer Laura Loomer made social media posts denouncing what she falsely claimed was “another trans shooter” hours after a teenager shot and killed four people at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia.
Posts correlating the trans community to mass shootings often go viral, The Trace reported.
The White House and the National Rifle Association did not immediately respond to request for comment.
