In the aftermath of Columbus, Sandy Hook, Parkland, Uvalde — and countless other school massacres — Americans have pleaded, demanded, and legislated for reform. Yet each time, Trump and his Republican allies in Congress offered the same sickening formula: thoughts and prayers, scapegoating, and deflection. Now, they’re adding another dark chapter: using a tragic Minneapolis Catholic school shooting carried out by a transgender individual as cover to propose banning all transgender people from buying guns. Two children were killed and at least 21 (mostly students) were injured.
According to several news outlets, Justice Department officials are considering classifying being transgender as grounds for disqualification from firearm ownership. This is the same DOJ, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, that is already gutting regulations and embracing extremist gun-lobby positions. And, the same administration that is demanding confidential data about trans children seeking care. This has happened here in Philadelphia where the DOJ has subpoenaed CHOP for the private information of minors under their care through the gender clinic. This reflects a chilling willingness to scapegoat a vulnerable minority rather than address the real causes of gun violence.
The attempted targeting of transgender people — who represent roughly 0.1% of mass shooters and are statistically far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators — is not just cruel; it’s cowardly. As GLAAD put it: “Instead of actual solutions, the administration is again choosing to scapegoat and target a small and vulnerable population.” Moreover, legal experts also warn such a broad ban would face major constitutional hurdles.
This is eerily familiar.
After Parkland in 2018, Trump convened a “Federal Commission on School Safety” that explicitly excluded guns from its purview. Its recommendations? Hardening schools, arming teachers, and rescinding equity-minded discipline guidance — without offering one dollar in new funding. And in late 2023, 216 House Republicans voted to block CDC funding for gun-violence research. Later, in 2025, Trump canceled $1 billion in mental health counselor grants that had been approved in the bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
Meanwhile, Trump’s rhetoric remains unchanged: mass shootings aren’t about guns, they’re about “mental illness,” video games, or evil individuals. He said it after Sutherland Springs in 2017, after El Paso and Dayton in 2019 (“Mental illness and hatred pull the trigger, not the gun”), after Uvalde in 2022, and again in early 2024 after Perry, Iowa, adding that “we have to get over it.” When he tells grieving parents that they just have to move on, it’s not empathy — it’s avoidance. And, blaming “crazy” individuals allows leaders to sidestep the real issue: the uniquely easy access to firearms in the United States.
Even the lone policy win, banning bump stocks in 2018, wouldn’t survive this administration’s judicial and executive rollback. In 2025, the DOJ dropped its defense of the pistol brace ban and legalized forced-reset triggers — allowing devices that simulate automatic fire to hit the market.
Under Trump, the courts have been weaponized, too. Three Supreme Court justices he appointed — Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett — joined the 6–3 conservative majority in the Bruen decision, which now requires gun laws to have 18th or 19th-century analogues. Since then, judges have recklessly invalidated age limits, magazine bans, and domestic-abuser gun prohibitions.
READ: Minneapolis Shooting Sparks Wave of Anti-Trans Hate Online
Now, the DOJ is considering taking it a step further: not by strengthening school safety or investing in mental health, but by stripping a civil right from transgender Americans. It’s not just about guns. It’s about sending a message: in this administration, only the powerful get rights. Vulnerable people get scapegoated.
Whether it’s counselors, safe discipline, or common-sense gun limits, the Trump-GOP formula is always the same: minimize reform, demonize others, maximize ideological division.
We should not bow to this horror. Instead of abolishing rights, we should abolish the easy access to weapons. Instead of targeting transgender citizens, we should target assault rifles. Instead of arming teachers, we should arm schools with resources to teach, to counsel, to humanize.
We have alternatives that work: countries like Australia tightened gun laws and haven’t re-lived school massacres. But America? We keep reinforcing the death spiral — more guns, more scapegoats, more avoidance of common sense.
Children deserve more than excuses. Transgender people deserve rights, inclusion, dignity — not blame. If America truly wanted to protect its youth, it would ban assault rifles, fund mental health in schools, and deliver justice — not scapegoating.
