Word came last week that the Department of Justice (DOJ) was considering banning transgender individuals from owning weapons.
This came in response to the mass shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school last month that killed two children and injured 18 others. The deceased shooter identified as trans.
But tragedies and the heightened emotions that accompany them lead to bad law, and that is the overriding point made by the National Rifle Association (NRA), the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR), and other 2A groups who quickly rallied to oppose the idea.
The NRA strongly denounced the sweeping erasure of gun rights for a class of citizens
Never mind the controversy surrounding gender dysphoria, gun rights groups immediately disparaged the idea of denying Second Amendment rights to a segment of society without due process.
The NRA, the nation’s oldest and largest gun rights organization, blasted the notion as unconstitutional while reaffirming its support for “the Second Amendment rights of all law-abiding Americans to purchase and use firearms.”
Gun rights groups know that such power would certainly be misused
The statement continued. “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.”
National Association for Gun Rights President Dudley Brown summed up his group’s position on X.
“As history proves, any new rules the government invents today will be abused against ill-favored communities,” Brown declared. “Our advice to the ATF, DOJ, and FBI is to stop chasing headlines on the back of the Second Amendment and focus on preserving and protecting gun rights so that law-abiding Americans can defend their loved ones from violent nutcases, criminals, and gang members.”
He argued that the federal government’s labeling people as “mentally defective” and applying that distinction to gun rights would violate due process.
GOA was even more succinct in its posting on X. “GOA opposes any & all gun bans. Full stop.”
Organization President Erich Pratt added that his group “does not compromise with our support for the right of all People to keep and bear arms.”
Fox News reported that the DOJ is considering the proper framework if they are to go forward with the ban. A department spokesperson said that options are being discussed, but specifics are currently lacking.
“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 explained. “No specific criminal justice proposals have been advanced at this time.”
Any such action would doubtlessly heavily involve the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). Not to mention a bevy of lawsuits from Second Amendment groups.
Advocates for the LGBTQ community struck back by categorizing the idea of such a ban as dangerous. They argued that males and not transgender individuals commit most shootings in the U.S.
Again, knee-jerk reactions to tragedies may be comforting at the time, but they are not the basis for good law.
The NRA and its colleague organizations are right. Blanket prohibitions of entire classes of people from exercising their Second Amendment rights are not only a failure of due process.
They also establish a terrible precedent of the government claiming that this or that group of law-abiding adults cannot be trusted with firearms. It does not take a wealth of imagination to conclude that this power could be gravely misused.
After all, that was routinely the case in the early days of the Republic. The U.S. corrected this course well over a century ago, and it is not a policy that needs to be resurrected.
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