As Cam noted on Monday, gun rights groups are universally decrying a proposal floated by the Department of Justice to bar transgender people from owning firearms. That move is unsurprising.
Finding the Washington Post agreeing is less so.
To be fair, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos wanted the paper's editorial and op-ed pages to focus on free market economics and civil liberties, but that doesn't mean it was ever a slam dunk that we'd see pro-gun commentary that often. After all, many anti-gunners think they're protecting the civil liberties of people.
The conservative position here is clear and rooted in deep historical precedent: Stripping disfavored groups of their Second Amendment rights is a dangerous progressive idea that must be rejected. The principles at stake are more important than today’s culture war skirmishes over bathroom access, sports participation and puberty blockers. If the government can declare transgender individuals mentally ill and strip them of their Second Amendment rights, then in blue states or under a Democratic president, no Republican would be safe.
The power to declare someone legally insane is one of the state’s most dangerous powers — and the ability to categorically so designate a class of people is even more alarming. Conservatives have resisted expanding this authority even if it means saving fewer lives. Consider depression as an example. Millions of Americans suffer from depression, some so seriously that they die by suicide. Nearly 60 percent of gun deaths in America are from suicides. Banning everyone who has seen a therapist for depression from owning firearms would almost certainly reduce gun deaths. But handing such power to bureaucrats would put the nation on a fast track to tyranny.
And let's understand that much of the rhetoric about transgender people will be echoed later as other groups get labeled as problematic and dangerous.
I've mentioned the depression thing before, because yeah, it would probably reduce gun deaths, as many who might decide to kill themselves would suddenly be disarmed and be forced to use some other means.
Of course, the flip side here is that others would simply opt not to seek treatment out of concern they'll be disarmed.
And the author brings up a really good point about the slippery slope this could result in.
Given that today’s left-wing orthodoxy would probably be happy to designate MAGA supporters clinically insane, this is not some conspiratorial fever dream. After all, 27 psychiatrists and psychologists wrote a best-selling book in 2017 declaring — from afar — that Trump is “dangerous” and “mentally unstable.”
There are some who think wanting to own a firearm is a sign of mental illness. Hell, it's not overly hard to make the case that anyone who wants a gun is paranoid to some degree or another. Sure, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you, but when you're dealing with a largely captured media that can all but beam narratives into people's brains, it wouldn't be a huge stretch to see this tried.
When you make it easy to declare a group of people unworthy of gun ownership over something that doesn't inherently make them dangerous, you've got a big problem in the making. Someone, somewhere, will decide to run with that.
Yes, there have been some transgender mass killers lately. Yes, we should probably look into why that seems to be the trend. Could pumping hormones into people who have other psychological issues push them over the edge? It's quite possible, maybe even probable. We should look into that.
But I also know some transgender folks who are responsible gun owners and who are our allies in defending the Second Amendment.
I'm glad to see the Washington Post amplify common sense.
