The Trump administration’s reported proposal to ban transgender individuals from proudly owning weapons has drawn condemnation from the Nationwide Rifle Affiliation (NRA) and each different notable gun-rights group within the nation.
The Day by day Wire first reported Thursday, primarily based on nameless Justice Division sources, that senior officers within the division are contemplating utilizing their rulemaking authority to declare that trans individuals are mentally unwell, stripping them of their Second Modification rights. Different main information shops rereported the story.
The Justice Division hasn’t issued any such rule but, or connected a reputation to any of the statements leaking out to the press, so this all quantities to extra of a trial balloon. However as Cause‘s Jacob Sullum wrote, the thought is “legally loony.” There isn’t any statutory authority for such a categorical decree. Even when Congress did move such a regulation, it might be unconstitutional primarily based on present Supreme Courtroom precedent and prevailing circuit court docket opinions.
If the Trump administration hoped to get a move from gun-rights teams over these small particulars, will probably be dissatisfied. Categorical bans—issued by govt fiat no much less—have been a crimson line for pro-Second Modification teams and lawmakers for many years.
“The NRA helps the Second Modification rights of all law-abiding Individuals to buy, possess and use firearms,” the group posted Friday on X. “The NRA doesn’t, and won’t, help any coverage proposals that implement sweeping gun bans that arbitrarily strip law-abiding residents of their Second Modification rights with out due course of.”
The Second Modification is not up for debate. pic.twitter.com/AQwouV4VDd
— NRA (@NRA) September 5, 2025
Stephen Gutowski, an impartial journalist overlaying gun rights and the gun business, reported that the NRA wasn’t alone: “Each main gun-rights group has now spoken in opposition to the thought of the DOJ making an attempt to strip trans individuals of their gun rights en masse,” he posted on X Friday.
Gutowski’s tally included Gun House owners of America, the Second Modification Basis, the Firearms Coverage Coalition, the Nationwide Affiliation for Gun Rights, and the Residents Committee for the Proper to Hold and Bear Arms.
“Disarming trans people primarily based purely on their self-identification flies within the face of the Structure and the present administration’s purported help for the Second Modification,” the Second Modification Basis stated in a press release to Newsweek. “Past the dangerous coverage and constitutional infirmities of such ‘concerns’ the Division of Justice has no authority to unilaterally determine teams of those that it want to strip of their constitutional rights. SAF sincerely hopes that the reviews of such concerns by the DOJ are inaccurate, because the coverage reportedly being contemplated is worthy of the strongest potential condemnation and authorized motion.”
Second Modification teams typically remind gun-control advocates that, traditionally, issues do not are likely to go properly for minority teams after they’re disarmed by the federal government, so it is good to see them presenting a united entrance in opposition to simply such a proposal.
If the Trump Administration has any potential to learn the room, it can quietly neglect about its concept to illegally strip a gaggle of Individuals of their constitutional proper to bear arms.
