Attorney General Pam Bondi has reportedly considered a ban on gun sales to transgender people following several high-profile shootings involving transgender killers. The argument is that these people are mentally ill, and so it wouldn’t be quite the stretch some might argue it is.
I’m not buying that, personally. Oh, gender dysphoria is a diagnosable mental illness, sure, but there’s a lot more going on. Plus, there’s the fact that once you start declaring groups dangerous and seeking to disarm them, you’re opening Pandora’s Box.
That’s something I came across in a student op-ed recently.
In fact, I found the argument kind of fascinating in a number of ways.
Regardless of what you believe about guns and the Second Amendment, this is a clear violation of the rights of Americans and is targeting one of the most marginalized and vulnerable groups in this country. The Bill of Rights does not care who you are, what you look like, what you believe in or what you identify as. These rights are intended to apply to every American citizen, and any attempt at making this no longer true is dangerous, hypocritical and emphasizes the state of regression America is heading toward. While many take advantage of their Second Amendment rights, the government is trying to take them away from those who are most vulnerable.
Let’s take a look at some statistics. According to The Gun Violence Archive, within the last decade, less than 1% of shootings involving four or more people were carried out by someone who identified as transgender. By contrast, Everytown states that “more than 70% of homicides of transgender people involve a firearm, with disproportionate impacts on black trans women.” In the same study, they concluded trans people are two-and-a-half times more likely to be victims of homicide compared to their cisgender counterparts. It’s not difficult to see a correlation here. Trans people, making up only 0.95% of the U.S. population, are far less likely to perpetrate shootings and are far more likely to be victims. However, people like Benny Johnson, an alt-right YouTube commentator, want you to believe that the “trans movement is radicalizing the mentally ill into becoming violent terrorists who target children for murder.”
This rhetoric that trans people are dangerous manipulators who intend to cleanse the cis population through gun violence and grooming is not only undeniably false, but also incredibly dangerous. Trans people are already particularly victimized by gun violence. Lies from bad faith actors will only increase the deaths of this population.
Now, let’s break down a few aspects of this before we move on.
First, there’s the admission that gun rights are, in fact, rights preserved by the Constitution and apply to individuals. That’s rare coming from universities these days, so I’m kind of glad to see it.
Granted, the use of Gun Violence Archive is less than ideal, considering they only base their so-called data on media reports, which means that if a local news outlet doesn’t include that a shooter identified as trans, that won’t show up in the database. Considering the state of the media these days and their views on transgender issues, it’s unlikely they’d highlight such a thing.
Further, the GVA uses an overly broad definition of mass shootings that includes things like gang warfare incidents where no one was killed. That’s going to skew the data in one direction or another, and since there isn’t a lot of documentation of transgender gang-bangers, I think we know how that goes.
Additionally, we have also seen some trans people who were supposedly victimized by gun violence actually turn out to be involved in criminal behavior themselves. I’m not saying they deserved to die or anything, but let’s not lean into the idea that they’re actually victimized because of their trans identity.
Still, the overall point that gun rights are for all Americans who haven’t lost them in a court of law is valid, and that was refreshing to see. What comes next isn’t new, but worth talking about.
On top of this, the targeting of trans people as supposed violent individuals ignores the larger source of deaths due to a firearm: cis white men. From the Rockefeller Institute of Government mass shootings factsheet, 54.4% of perpetrators are white, and overwhelmingly male at 95.3% as of September 8, 2025. Despite this information about mass shooters and repeated calls to action, conservatives insisted upon protecting the right to bear arms. But now that a single trans person committed an act of violence, it’s gun control as far as the eye can see.
Now, the Rockefeller Institute uses a slightly different definition of “mass shooting” that, while counting injuries and fatalities like GVA does, also limits them to locations that were chosen at random or for symbolic value. In other words, not “we shot up this place because we knew that guy and his friends would be there.” That knocks out a lot of gang activity.
And yeah, the largest portion of mass shooters do seem to be white males. Of course, I think the author is using the statistics a little wrong, making leaps from two majorities to assume something that the numbers don’t actually show, though I think it’s probably close enough not to matter all that much.
See, the issue is and has always been that if you restrict guns by saying, “We think this group of people is dangerous and shouldn’t have guns,” that can be applied far more broadly. For example, if 54.4 percent of mass killers are white, then it’s not a stretch to say we need to disarm white people.
That’s especially true if you throw in suicides, which are mostly white men as well.
Or, the majority of violent offenders arrested by police are black men. Do we really want to go back to the roots of gun control in this country and try to disarm black folks simply because of what some of their number have done?
Obviously not, yet that’s where this slippery slope could lead.
“But Tom, you said you understood that transgender people have a mental illness. That means it’s different.”
Yeah, gender dysphoria is a mental illness in the DSM-5, the latest edition of the guidebook for mental illnesses. It most definitely counts as a mental illness according to the experts in the field.
But so is body dysmorphia, but that doesn’t mean runway models and bodybuilders are dangerous and should be forbidden from owning guns.
Not all mental illnesses are created equal, and the law doesn’t give the attorney general any authority to blanket declare people who identify one way or another as too mentally ill to enjoy the totality of their rights. Again, if that were to happen, it would soon spread to more and more diagnoses. That will include things like PTSD, which would impact millions of veterans and rape survivors, for example.
I find bringing up the fact that gun rights are individual rights interesting, even as it’s clear that the author is supportive of transgender people far beyond thinking their rights shouldn’t be infringed upon. That’s not something you normally see together.
And bringing up other groups where one could make a similar assumption isn’t new, but it’s still valuable to point out, especially as this isn’t coming from the pro-gun voices.
Editor’s Note: While this was a little refreshing, the mainstream media and the colleges that feed them continue to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment.
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