Last month, in the wake of a mass shooting in Minneapolis that investigators say was carried out by a transgender woman, the Department of Justice began looking into ways to strip trans Americans of the right to bear arms. One senior Justice Department official told CNN that the goal is “to ensure that mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are unable to obtain firearms while they are unstable and unwell.” (It should be noted that mental illness alone does not currently disqualify someone from owning a gun; federal law stipulates that only those who have been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric institution, or who have been declared mentally incompetent by a legal authority, can be prohibited from gun ownership.) Upon hearing the news about the internal D.O.J. discussions, the National Rifle Association issued a statement declaring its opposition to limiting the Second Amendment rights of any law-abiding citizen—though the N.R.A. did not explicitly name trans people. For even the most full-throated gun advocates, trans people are often the awkward exception: about a month before he was killed, Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist, called for a ban on trans gun ownership. “If you are crazy enough to want to hormonally and surgically ‘change your sex,’ ” he posted on X, “you have a mental disorder, and you are too crazy to own a firearm.”

As the culture wars erupt into violent extremism, “gender ideology”—which the Trump Administration defines as “the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex”—has gone from being seen as “woke” to being framed by members of the political right as one of the sources of America’s evils, including its violence. Most violence, political or otherwise, is not perpetrated by trans people. In fact, trans people are four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime. Yet right-wing commentators have fixated on two incidents involving shooters who were described by authorities as trans—a mass shooting at the Covenant School, in Nashville, in 2023, and the more recent shooting at Annunciation Catholic School, in Minneapolis—as evidence of “trans terrorism,” in the words of the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh. The Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank responsible for Project 2025, recently issued a call for the F.B.I. to designate “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism” as a domestic terror threat. In both the case of the Nashville shooting and the Minneapolis attack, authorities have not shared any evidence indicating that the shooters’ respective gender identities drove their horrific actions. There was widespread speculation that the shooter at the Covenant School, who had previously been a student there, was motivated by anti-religious resentment. But an investigation conducted by the Metro Nashville Police Department concluded that the shooter, who had enjoyed their time at the school, had been motivated by fame.

Almost immediately after Charlie Kirk was killed in Utah, three weeks ago, conservative figures began speculating that the shooter was either trans or had murdered Kirk because of his anti-trans rhetoric. (Kirk was talking about trans mass shooters just before he was shot.) Republicans quickly consolidated Democrats, Antifa, and trans people into one radical enemy. “I mean, give me a fucking break,” the congresswoman Nancy Mace said on Capitol Hill. “This guy’s talking about mass trans violence, tranny violence—I’m not going to filter myself—and got shot in the neck like that.” The day after Kirk’s death, the Wall Street Journal reported that the ammunition used in the shooting had been engraved with expressions of transgender “ideology”—a claim that was refuted by Utah’s governor, Spencer Cox, and that the Journal later walked back. First, conservatives said the shooter was trans; then they said the bullets were trans. Now they’ve seized on reports that Tyler Robinson, the suspect in custody, had a trans partner or roommate. As always, their aims are a moving target, with a common enemy.

The issue of minority gun ownership has long been fraught. In 1857, Chief Justice Roger Taney argued in Dred Scott v. Sandford that Black people should not be recognized as citizens because it would give them the right “to keep and carry arms wherever they want.” Even after Black people became citizens entitled to Second Amendment rights, they often had to deal with discriminatory gun laws limiting their access to firearms. Despite his house being firebombed in 1956, Martin Luther King, Jr., was unable to obtain a concealed-carry permit. Because of this, guns would ultimately become a key component of the Black Power movement. Activists carried guns for community patrols, self-defense, and as a show of force. In May, 1967, the Black Panthers entered the California Capitol Building with shotguns, pistols, and rifles to protest stricter gun-control laws. In recent years, Black and L.G.B.T.Q. gun ownership has been on the rise, with individuals in both groups citing the marked increase in hate crimes as a primary motivator for arming themselves in self-defense.

Many trans gun owners I spoke with were anxious about the Administration potentially limiting their access to firearms. “The trans people I know, both gun owners and others, see the prospect of the D.O.J. taking trans people’s guns as a prelude to atrocity,” Eden Fenn, a young trans woman, told me. She called herself “the definition of a reluctant gun owner,” describing her ownership as a precautionary measure against the potential of anti-trans violence. Similarly, Margaret Killjoy, a trans musician and writer, told me that she obtained a gun permit after being doxed by far-right extremists.

I’m not a gun owner, but I understand the instinct: after the shooting at Pulse night club, in 2016, it occurred to me that I might want to learn how to use a gun for my own protection. It took me several years to overcome my squeamishness, and I finally went to a gun range for the first time this past summer. Aside from the employees staffing the front desk, I was the only woman there. My instructor told me to be careful of gunshot residue, since I was showing slightly more skin than the men in camouflage and hockey jerseys next to me. Over all, it was a surprisingly mundane outing. I fired a few rounds and then I left.