After news broke that Trump’s Department of Justice was considering taking away transgender people’s right to gun ownership, I asked the uncompromising National Rifle Association for its position. I didn’t hear back. This morning, an NRA spokesperson sent a link to a statement on Twitter.
Though it took a day to react to a red-line-crossing threat on their bedrock principle (peddling and defending a flawed interpretation of the Second Amendment), it turns out the uncompromising NRA holds an uncompromising position on gun rights.
“The NRA supports the Second Amendment rights of all law-abiding Americans to purchase, possess and use firearms,” the statement read. “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 you can read, the word “transgender” is not in the statement, but the NRA confirmed to CNN that “it was commenting on the Justice Department discussions.” Even for those arch-conservatives, the US government doing a tyranny by “arbitrarily” and selectively targeting a minority group’s gun rights goes too far. From their cold, dead hands, indeed.
And the cold, dead hands of many others. Including transgender people in its definition of Americans is not about transgender rights. It’s about gun rights.
It still has dead kids to answer for, and the expiration of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, and the checks on private gun sales we don’t have, and the decades of gun violence research the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not conduct. Drawing a line in the sand on a blatantly discriminatory law does not excuse a commitment to snuffing out even common sense gun reform.
Not surprising. I’ve an elderly dog who struggles with anxiety and is showing increasing signs of dementia, and I’d be surprised if they opposed his right to carry.
transpeople are a market for guns, and the NRA is an industry trade group. They don’t care who has guns, they just want to sell as many as they can.
And this whole ban on transpeople owning guns is so stupid. Custom designed for belligerent idiots (i.e. Republicans). To put it in their terms, are gun stores supposed to ask customers to drop their pants and to see what genitals a person has? Are they supposed to make a judgment call on when a woman looks too “mannish” or a man looks too “femme”?
This is yet another distraction from the Epstein Child Rape enterprise, and the powerful men who patronized it.
Of course the NRA is against any limits on gun ownership (FYI, water is wet). If Viv is truly surprised then she hasn’t been paying attention the past 2-3 decades (sorry, not sure how old she is).
I think the real surprise here for Vivian and The Stranger is that a conservative organization was not in lockstep with their political allies. I think this is more a commentary about the progressive demand for uniformity of thought and idealogical purity than it is about gun rights. In the normal world, people and organizations have differing viewpoints on issues. Vivian and TS are in utter disbelieve that is even a possibility. They might find that if they pushed back on some of the truly idiotic progressive viewpoints around here they would be surprised what it would do for their overall credibility.
if Only these
Progressives
weren’t
Glad the NRA has sorted themselves out after hypocritically supporting the Mulford Act. Or maybe they’re just more accepting of trans than Black people.
It doesn’t appear that the DoJ has put forth any ideas no matter how flawed about how they would accomplish this. It’s not the transness itself that causes these shooting, so much as mental health co-morbidities, which aren’t exclusive to trans people. And if those aren’t addressed in addition to gender affirming care that could led to poorer mental health outcomes for trans people who have such co-morbidities.
Maybe the Trump admin could put more effort into the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, but who am I kidding they are incompetent as fuck.
6: That was yestercentury
I think you’ll find that the message of the transgender community is the same message you’d get from Texas:
Come and take it.
9: Your analogy is fuzzy. What’s your point?
Um, what is with the vitriol in here against The Stranger and the writer?
So many assumptions. Why do you think there is surprise? I didn’t read surprise in this article. Perhaps this is just an article commenting on something people were curious on as the NRA has a huge lobby arm and it’s good to reflect on those who can sway politics.
Like… progressives know the NRA just wants to make money, but it’s worth remarking on because the NRA does still greatly influences our politics. A lot of folks take their existence for granted as if they aren’t just another lobby group that could be squashed. We can stop talking about them as if there’s nothing to be done about them.
People do over estimate and under estimate knowledge a lot. There are things we know that other people might not, and that makes sense as we all live different lives with different levels of access to information. Some people really don’t know anything about politics or the NRA beyond soundbites or a comment in the show.
I want those people to feel okay with admitting they don’t know things, so they can also know they can ask questions and become more informed. Folks are too eager to make fun of others and as a latino trans man, who has to live in this world, I would appreciate if folks had more calm talks with their family before they go and start hating the world enough to vote in someone like Trump.
Also, the tone of this article, if you’re not assuming the worst first chance you get, is quite tongue-in-cheek. There’s awareness with progressives, and maybe most leftists, that the NRA once backed gun-control in reaction to Black Panthers, so their choice is interesting. Like they’re really going all or nothing on guns, and I do wonder what that says about how they view their own power.
And yeah, they def still are greedy, as even with how racist, sexist, or queerphobic they and their allies may be, they don’t think this type of fight will hit their numbers. If anything, people who buy guns will buy more guns in reaction.
Like y’all can actually hold a discussion instead of being angry at people, who aren’t your enemies. We literally mostly just argue about the best way to solve our way towards good. Progressives just tend to have a less cynical take. We know crime numbers are down, immigrants are people, and that people do end up getting better if more than one person is helping them. We also know there’s a communication problem.
Also, we could all agree that the NRA sucks, and like the article points out, it’s worth it to still talk about gun control.
10: I imagine someone trans is just saying they have a right to their guns, and people should not mistake trans people for anything less than the stereotype one must hold for how a Texan might defend their perceived rights.
It could be taken lightly or seriously, but ultimately no need to assume the worst first, so I haven’t.
@11 “Um, what is with the vitriol in here against The Stranger and the writer?”
That’s literally all these people do. You should see what happens when one of them makes a typo or forgets a continue reading link. Everyone shits their pants.
The NRA are just the latest in a string of conservatives who are realizing too late that the candidate they thought would serve their interests will betray them.
@2: No pants-dropping required. The misguided attempt at banning trans gun ownership is a mis-readng of the ATF Form 4473 question 21f. “Have you ever been adjudicated as a mental defective OR have you ever been committed to a mental institution?”
It doesn’t ban those who have voluntarily committed themselves for psychiatric care. If one could even consider any kind of pre-transition screening to be that. If one is not adjudicated or committed, they are good to go. Buy all the guns you want.
“peddling and defending a flawed interpretation of the Second Amendment”
Well, Justice McCall, the majority of the US Supreme Court disagrees with you.