On Sunday, I commented in a piece about the Tumbler Ridge shooting that I wasn't getting into the trans thing because it's outside of our wheelhouse. There's a lot of politics there, and it's not something I wanted to engage in at all.
But since someone at The Daily Wire decided to talk about the briefly proposed trans gun ban, I guess we're going there.
Let's understand that I have no interest, at least in this context, in talking about most of the broader political issues involving trans people. I've talked about that extensively on my Substack, but here? This ain't the place.
But when we talk about banning an entire category of people from owning guns, well, I think we need to have that conversation.
First, let's get into what The Daily Wire published.
Kirk’s last conversation on earth centered on a topic that he had discussed at length, particularly throughout the end of August and beginning of September: the disturbing rise in transgender violence. Kirk was unapologetic about his stance, that trans-identifying individuals were targeting Christians, and, given their gender confusion, they were too mentally unwell to own firearms.
“If you are crazy enough to want to hormonally and surgically ‘change your sex,’ you have a mental disorder, and you are too crazy to own a firearm,” he posted on “X” on August 27, 2025, the day that the trans-identifying shooter, Robert Westman, killed Catholic school children before taking his own life.
“First Nashville, now this,” Kirk asked the same day, referring to the trans-shooter who targeted children at Covenant Christian School. “How many times makes a trend?”
Westman’s attack came just two years after another that trans-identifying killer targeted Christian school children in Nashville. Leaders of Catholic and independent schools in Minnesota had begged Governor Tim Walz to help prevent similar shootings, fearing that the next shooter would target one of their schools. That security funding was never authorized, a fact which became painfully evident after the Minneapolis shooting in late August.
Now five months later, the world is reeling from another transgender-identifying attacker, this time in Canada. The shooter, a man who believed he was a woman and wore a dress, opened fire on a rural school in British Columbia, killing ten and injuring dozens. It is yet another example of transgender violence, but the pressing issue that Kirk was opining on regularly now seems to have fallen out of consideration.
That's because the proposal was stupid from the start.
Yes, there has been an influx of trans-identifying mass killers in recent years. Yes, this is troubling. But what we haven't done, in part because the politics won't even let us look, is whether the issue is trans people as a whole, or whether the influx of people who identify as trans, coupled with the removal of any medical efforts to confirm this identity, has put a boost of hormones in already irrational people.
That's important, because when you talk about disarming an entire population, even a self-identifying one, you need to make damn sure you know what you're doing and why.
See, gun rights are rights for everyone. It's not just for people whose lifestyles you personally approve of.
"But trans people are mentally ill!" someone will say, and there's a point there. Gender dysphoria is classified as a mental illness in various DSM editions, though I'm unsure if it's still there due to the current politics. So yeah, I can buy that it's a mental illness.
So is depression.
What's more, people who suffer from depression are more likely to kill themselves and, potentially, the rest of their families in a murder-suicide.
Should we disarm people diagnosed with depression?
Federal law doesn't say that anyone with a mental illness is a prohibited person. It says people who have been adjudicated as "mentally defective," an archaic term for mentally incompetent, are barred from owning guns.
Being trans isn't the same thing.
This coming weekend, I'm slated to help MC the 2A Freedom Fest in Summerfield, Florida. One of the speakers there is Gina Roberts, a staunch defender of the Second Amendment and a trans woman. Gina has been at the event every year I've been there, and I've come to deeply care for and respect Gina as a person.
Should she be disarmed simply because of her status as a trans woman? Why would I disarm someone who has shown no signs of mental imbalance or hostility, simply because they have a condition that is shared with some horrible people who did horrible things?
The whole "initiative" to block gun ownership for trans people didn't go anywhere because it was always a ridiculous idea. Legally, it's a non-starter. Constitutionally, it's indefensible.
And more importantly, it's still gun control, and that's something that should never fly in this country, regardless of who is being targeted.
