IF THEY TAKE TRANS PEOPLE'S GUNS, THE RIGHT TO VOTE WILL BE NEXT

The right's war on transgender people won't end until it's unlawful to be trans, at any age, anywhere in America. Donald Trump's Justice Department is taking a big step in that direction right now. CNN reports:

In the wake of the Minneapolis Catholic church shooting, senior Justice Department officials are weighing proposals to limit transgender people’s right to possess firearms, according to two officials familiar with the internal discussions.

The talks, described as preliminary in nature, appear to build on an idea that has gained some currency in conservative media since the Minneapolis shooting that killed two children and injured 21, most of them children, at Annunciation Catholic Church, an attack that police say was carried out by a 23-year-old transgender woman.

Actually, the right has been compiling lists of real or alleged trans shooters and blaming mass shootings on transgenderism for years now, as is clear from this March 2023 Reuters fact check debunking social media posts that, among other things, accuse "the modern trans movement" of "radicalizing activists into terrorists."

Trans people would be denied access to firearms based on the belief -- nearly universal on the right -- that trans people are mentally ill by definition. This is from the Daily Wire, which broke the story:

“Individuals within the DOJ are reviewing ways to ensure that mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are unable to obtain firearms while they are unstable and unwell,” one source inside the Justice Department told The Daily Wire.

CNN says:

Federal law requires that a judge declare a person to be mentally “defective” before being stripped of their right to own firearms.

Not at all coincidentally, a recent piece at The Federalist, written by Jordan Boyd just after the Minneapolis shooting, bore the headline "We Don’t Need Gun Control, We Need to Classify Gender Dysphoria as a Mental Illness Again." Boyd wrote:

In olden days, the genderbending and deranged musings of the alleged shooter who sprayed bullets through the stained glass during a Catholic school’s mass would get him institutionalized and easily disqualify him from lawfully obtaining a gun, as law enforcement officials claim he did. Instead, the disordered impulses and feelings of those like the deceased suspect are indulged by his parents, the people who govern him, and leftist-led brainwashing.

But gun ownership isn't the only right the government can withhold if a person is deemed mentally "defective." Stateline tells us:

Laws in 39 states and Washington, D.C., allow judges to strip voting rights from people with mental disorders ranging from schizophrenia to Down syndrome who are deemed “incapacitated” or “incompetent.” Some of those states use archaic language like “idiots” or “insane persons” in their statutes.

I don't know whether the federal government will go through with this plan to deny guns to trans people. But red states might do this if the feds don't -- and if there's no societal outcry, the next step could be using laws about mental competence to strip trans people of voting rights. If that happens, we could be on our way to a series of Nuremberg Laws for trans people, and further crackdowns beyond that.

What do right-wingers want? The Federalist's John Daniel Davidson puts it starkly:

It’s Time to Eradicate Transgenderism From Public Life

Davidson writes:

Public policy ... should focus on the ideology of transgenderism and those who perpetrate it. We should treat it the way we treated radical Islamism after 9/11, or communism in the 1950s. It should be understood as a dangerous threat, and anyone advocating or working to advance it should be treated as a criminal and an enemy of the people.

Specifically:

Doctors that administer so-called “gender-affirming care,” whether in the form of prescribing hormone-blockers or performing mutilative surgeries on otherwise healthy patients, should have their medical licenses revoked and face criminal prosecution. They should arguably be held liable for the crimes of the mentally unstable people they exploited for profit.

Such laws should make no distinction between doctors who do this to minors or to adults....

By the same token, parents that affirm their children in transgenderism and facilitate their “transition” should be treated as child abusers and dealt with accordingly. Democrat-controlled states like California would like to make it a crime for parents to refuse to affirm their child’s “gender identity,” but what’s needed are laws that do the opposite, and criminalize such affirmation. Same goes for teachers, coaches, and any other adult who has regular contact with and responsibility for minors....

When politicians promote and embrace transgenderism, there should likewise be repercussions, like the withholding of federal funds — similar to how Trump has dealt with universities that turn a blind eye to campus radicalism or antisemitism....

As Auron MacIntyre memorably put it, “I don’t want gun control, I want trans control.” The entire corrupt enterprise should be outlawed and buried, forced underground.

This is a popular idea on the right.

Trans people shouldn't even be allowed to speak in public never mind own guns

— outlander 💥 (@justoutlander_) September 4, 2025

They’re not people. So they don’t get guns

— Marcus Aurelius (@romanmaurelius) September 4, 2025

Trans and blacks should not own guns.

— Ghostofwatanabe (@ghostofwatanabe) September 4, 2025

This is a right-wing idea, but it's enabled by liberals who get the icks from trans people, or who rail against the Democratic Party for caring only about "identity politics" (even as many Democratic politicians have been throwing trans people under the bus). If we let this happen to trans people, it won't stop with guns, and it won't stop with the trans community. Remember what the right has said for years:

People who think "liberalism is a mental disorder" can take away our basic citizenship, too.