By Dave Workman
Responding to published reports that senior Justice Department officials are “weighing proposals” to prohibit gun ownership by transgender people in reaction to the deadly Minneapolis church shooting, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms says the idea should be immediately scrapped.
In a Friday statement, CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb called the ban proposal “disturbing.”
“Prohibiting whole groups of people from owning and using firearms because a sick individual misused a gun to harm and kill children is as reprehensible as restricting the rights of all law-abiding citizens because some people have committed crimes,” Gottlieb said. “That anyone in the Trump administration would consider such nonsense is alarming.”
CNN reported this week “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.”
According to the CNN report, which did not name the officials it was quoting, “the idea of restricting gun rights has long been a red line for conservatives, with many Republican lawmakers and gun rights groups opposing red flag laws and or other policies aimed at keeping guns away from people suffering from mental health issues.”
“But Justice Department leadership,” the CNN report continued, “is seriously considering whether it can use its rulemaking authority to follow on to Trump’s determination to bar military service by transgender people and declare that people who are transgender are mentally ill and can lose their Second Amendment rights to possess firearms, according to one Justice official.”
CCRKBA’s Gottlieb fire back.
“Gun owners already know what it’s like for the government to penalize them for crimes they did not commit,” Gottlieb said. “We shouldn’t even consider such an extreme response to heinous act committed by one disturbed individual, much less implement it, no matter how horrible the crime. The deranged Minneapolis killer is no longer a threat to anybody, and we needn’t make scapegoats of others who had nothing to do with that outrage, just to create the impression something is being done.”
He expressed amusement over the fact that liberal pundits are suddenly finding themselves in a quandary. They’re having to defend the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms because of reports some unidentified Trump administration officials are considering a drastic disarmament move against transgender persons.
“The ironic aspect of this controversy,” Gottlieb noted, “is that some in the liberal media are suddenly supporting gun rights because somebody in the Trump administration is talking about restricting transgenders from exercising their Second Amendment rights. Perhaps they will learn something from this.”
He offered a lesson in civics and constitutional rights, something which, it appears, has escaped the unnamed government officials.
“The government, no matter who is in charge, must understand that enumerated rights protected by the Constitution cannot be stripped away for what amounts to a publicity stunt,” Gottlieb observed. “If we allow that to happen to one minority group, it could happen to another group, and then another, until the right becomes a distant memory, especially for those of us who have worked so hard to protect it. This is a bad idea, and it needs to go away immediately.”
Workman is editor-in-chief at TheGunMag.com.
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