I confess that I didn’t realize today was “Trans Day of Remembrance” until I saw a tweet from Giffords that tries to put a pro-gun control spin on the murders of transgenders. I also didn’t realize that it’s also National Peanut Butter Fudge Day, National Rural Health Day, National Hug-a-Runner Day, and (my favorite) National Absurdity Day, bu there you go.
Giffords, in its post, wrote, “This Transgender Day of Remembrance, we honor the lives stolen from us in violent acts of hate and bigotry. At least 27 trans people were killed this year according to @TransEquality, and many of them died by gun violence. America’s gun violence epidemic is fueling this crisis.”
The gun control group added, “Every trans person deserves to live freely, safely, and joyfully. They deserve to be protected from hate and gun violence, and to live in a world where they don’t need to fear for their lives. We’ll always work to build this future and honor every trans life stolen with action.”
Despite that claim, Giffords isn’t working for a future where trans people can live freely, or where they’re protected from hate or violence. They’re working for a future where trans people (and everyone else) are unable to protect themselves from violence because legal gun ownership has become a thing of the past.
Everytown for Gun Safety has gotten in on the act as well.
Today on #TransDayOfRemembrance, we are holding in our hearts the transgender and gender-expansive people who have been killed in the US in the last year—most of them with guns.
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— Everytown for Gun Safety (@everytown.bsky.social) November 20, 2025 at 10:32 AM
Interestingly, the first name on Everytown’s list was shot and killed by the Los Angeles Police Department after calling 911 to report they’d been kidnapped. Police, of course, are one of the few groups the gun control lobby wants to see armed and routinely exempts from their laws, even as they proclaim “police violence is gun violence.”
The third person on their list, meanwhile, was allegedly murdered by individuals who identified as LGBTQ, which negates Everytown’s claim that every one of these individuals was the victim of “hate-fueled violence” because of their transgender identity.
The case of Sam Nordquist, though, does speak to the need to be able to defend oneself, and the difficulties that gun control regimes impose on those who want or need to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
Nordquist lived in Minnesota, but traveled to New York in September of last year to visit an online girlfriend. Nordquist originally planned on staying just a couple of weeks, but apparently decided to remain indefinitely. Nordquist’s family lost touch though, and filed a missing persons report with the Canandaigua Police on February 9 of this year.
On February 13, police found Nordquist’s body, wrapped in plastic, in a field about 20 miles south of the small motel where the couple had been staying. The police investigation uncovered shocking evidence of a horrific death and weeks of abuse beforehand.
The torture, according to court records, started on New Year’s Day and went on for weeks. Seven people, including Arzuaga [Nordquist’s girlfriend], held him captive in Room 22, meting out a hideous pattern of abuse. Authorities say the group kicked him, beat him with sticks, dog toys, ropes, bottles, belts, canes and wooden boards. They starved him, forced him to eat feces and drink urine and tobacco spit.
They made him kneel facing a wall, doused him with bleach and sexually assaulted him with foreign objects, court records say. Among those in the room were two young children who were coerced into some of the abuse, authorities said. Asked this week if the children belonged to Arzuaga and if the children were now in state custody, Wolford, the assistant district attorney, declined to comment.
New York State Police Capt. Kelly Swift, the local commander overseeing the case, called Sam Nordquist’s killing “one of the most horrific crimes I have ever investigated.”
While all this was going on for weeks inside Room 22, there appears to be no indication that that any witnesses overheard the torture. No one reported any suspicious activity at Patty’s Lodge, officials said this week.
I have no idea what Sam Nordquist thought about guns. Nordquist may very well have been a big gun control supporter. What I do know, however, is that if Nordquist had decided it would be a good idea to have a pistol for personal protection while traveling halfway across the country to meet an online girlfriend, it would have been illegal to do so.
New York doesn’t recognize any out-of-state carry permits, so even if Nordquist had a license to carry it wouldn’t have been valid in Canandaigua. If Nordquist had become alarmed by the behavior of Arzuaga and others and wanted to purchase a pistol for self-protection after arriving in New York, that too would have been against the law. Nordquist might have been able to purchase a non-semi-automatic rifle or shotgun from a local FFL, but it’d be awfully hard to hide one of those on your person.
Sam Nordquist didn’t die from an act of “gun violence.” New York’s gun laws, rated an “A-” by Giffords, didn’t save Sam Nordquist. If anything, they prevented Nordquist from legally obtaining a firearm that might have been used in self-defense against multiple psychopaths. Even merely displaying a pistol might have allowed Norquist to leave Room 22 unharmed and return to Minnesota.
Again, I don’t know that Sam Nordquist would have carried a gun to New York or purchased one after arriving, but I do know that Nordquist should have been able to do so. Self-defense is a human right, and groups like Giffords and Everytown are enabling violence against transgenders and everyone else by making it harder for people to legally keep and bear arms. That’s their goal, and it is fundamentally at odds with a future where we can all live “freely, safely, and joyfully.”
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their victim disarmament agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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