This article discusses gun violence, mass shootings, and government policies targeting transgender people. It includes references to a recent shooting and may be distressing for some readers.
While the American gun lobby enjoys untouchable protection, transgender Americans are facing relentless targeting.
In the wake of the Minneapolis shooting on Aug. 27, where a transgender woman killed two children and injured 21 at Annunciation Catholic Church, Trump’s Department of Justice is looking to ban transgender Americans from owning guns. For an administration so invested in its Second Amendment right to bear arms, the move represents a clear attack on the freedom of transgender Americans.
According to Reuters, in the past 12 years, there’ve been more than 5,700 mass shootings in the United States; only five perpetrators have been identified as transgender, while 5,472 shooters were cisgender men. It’s clear from statistics alone that the Department of Justice is only entertaining this notion to systematically strip transgender Americans of their constitutional rights.
Meanwhile, transgender individuals are among the most vulnerable segment of the population to gun violence. A gun was used in 72.4 percent of transgender homicides; of these, 58 percent were under the age of 30, compared to 48 percent of overall homicide victims. Instead of protecting transgender people, the Department of Justice has taken yet another step to strip them of their rights. Other blatantly anti-transgender developments under the current administration include recognizing only two sexes, denying changes for passport gender markers, and relocating transgender women to men’s prisons.
The ban was ushered in as federal law requires a person to be mentally “defective” to be stripped of the right to bear arms. According to the Federal Firearm Prohibition, a “mental defective” is someone who lacks mental competence or is a danger to themselves or others. Although gender dysphoria—a psychological stress from not aligning with one’s assigned sex—is included in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)—the Department of Justice’s reasoning behind the ban— it doesn’t make transgender people any less mentally capable, or a danger to others.
Such a proposal risks classifying all transgender people as mentally ill, which isn’t the reality. If anything, the risk of gender dysphoria, depression and suicidal ideation is heightened by a lack of access to gender-affirming care, a treatment the Trump administration has repeatedly targeted.
Concerningly, the current administration readily blames mental illness for gun violence while refusing to fund mental health programs across the country.
It’s frustrating to only see the U.S. government do something about the growing gun violence problem when it perfectly suits their agenda of systemically removing the rights of transgender people. In the U.S., the gun rights lobby spends almost double the gun control lobby annually, as the death toll from gun violence grows to 125 per day.
The proposed ban isn’t about public safety; it’s about erasing transgender rights. As gun violence continues to claim lives, the government’s refusal to regulate the real drivers of mass shootings only underscores its hypocrisy.
U.S. needs to take meaningful action towards addressing the problem of gun violence, not scapegoating a population more likely to be a victim than a perpetrator.
Tags
Gun Violence, Trump, U.S. Politics
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