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The National Rifle Association (NRA) has sounded off on reports that the Trump administration is mulling a way of limiting transgender people’s ability to purchase firearms.
The gun lobby group, the largest in the U.S. with 5 million members according to its website, released a statement Friday reinforcing its commitment that all law-abiding Americans have a right to bear arms.
It comes as Department of Justice officials have had several internal meetings about placing restrictions on trans people in the wake of Annunciation School shooter Robin Westman, who identified as trans, killing two people and injuring 18 others late last month. Westman’s firearms were purchased legally, according to the Associated Press.
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“The NRA supports the Second Amendment rights of all law-abiding Americans to purchase and use firearms,” the statement reads.
“NRA does not, and will not, support any policy proposals that implement sweeping gun bans that arbitrarily strip law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights without due process.”
As well as the NRA, Gun Owners of America (GOA) issued a clear, uncompromising stance on the issue.
“GOA opposes any and all gun bans. Full stop,” the GOA wrote on X.
In another post, the group quoted senior vice president Erich Pratt as saying: “Gun Owners of America does not compromise with our support for the right of all People to keep and bear arms.”
The National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR), another major gun lobby group, has not formally weighed in on the issue, but its president, Dudley Brown, said he opposes the idea. He argued on X that labeling people “mentally defective” to strip them of gun rights would be a due-process violation.
The DOJ officials’ conversations are in an early stage and no concrete steps have been taken, multiple sources told Fox News. One source pointed to a “pattern” of shootings carried out by transgender people, including Westman’s attack.
Audrey “Aiden” Hale, who identified as transgender, killed six at The Covenant School in Nashville in 2023. Alec McKinney, a transgender teen, was one of two shooters at STEM School in Colorado, where one person was killed, and eight others were wounded.
Another source said the DOJ’s discussions about banning transgender people from buying or owning guns have involved the Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice to the executive branch.
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The source indicated that the DOJ officials are currently thinking through a feasible legal framework. Such discussions would likely rope in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which is part of the DOJ and has authority over federal rules related to firearms.
When asked about the talks, a DOJ spokesperson downplayed the discussions targeting transgender people, telling Fox News the department has been examining numerous options to address the correlation between shootings and mental health but that it has not come up with anything specific.
“The DOJ is actively evaluating options to prevent the pattern of violence we have seen from individuals with specific mental health challenges and substance abuse disorders,” the spokesperson said. “No specific criminal justice proposals have been advanced at this time.”
One of the sources said DOJ officials “are reviewing ways to ensure that mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are unable to obtain firearms while they are unstable and unwell.”
People with mental health conditions are typically not banned from purchasing guns under current laws, which the Supreme Court reaffirmed as recently as 2024 in United States v. Rahimi. But in some instances, such as a court deeming someone mentally incompetent, that information is supposed to crop up during a background check and block a customer from obtaining a gun license.
LGBTQ advocates called the idea of a ban misguided and dangerous, arguing that the vast majority of mass shootings in the U.S. are carried out by men and do not involve transgender people.
“Transgender people are less than 2 percent of the overall population, yet four times as likely to be victims of crime,” GLAAD said. “Everyone deserves to be themselves, be safe, and be free from violence and discrimination. We all deserve leaders who prioritize keeping all of us safe and free.”
Since President Donald Trump returned to office, his administration has removed transgender people from military service, scrubbed some federal websites of mentions of them and is trying to bar changing the sex marker on passports. The administration has also been vehemently opposed to allowing biological males to compete in female sports and curtailed access to so-called gender-affirming care.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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