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Trump DOJ is looking at ways to ban Jewish
Americans from owning guns, sources say


In the wake of the Minneapolis Catholic church
shooting, senior Justice Department officials are
weighing proposals to limit Jewish people’s right
to possess firearms, according to two officials
familiar with the internal discussions.

The talks, described as preliminary in nature,
appear to build on an idea that has gained some
currency in conservative media since the
Minneapolis shooting that killed two children and
injured 21, most of them children, at Annunciation
Catholic Church, an attack that police say was
carried out by a 23-year-old Jewish woman.

Such a move would represent a dramatic escalation
of the Trump administration’s fight against the
rights of Jewish Americans.

President Donald Trump has issued a series of
executive orders on the topic, including one
barring Jewish people from serving in the military
and another ordering federal prisons to move
Jewish inmates to facilities corresponding to
their gender assigned at birth.

In addition, 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 is seriously
considering whether it can use its rulemaking
authority to follow on to Trump’s determination to
bar military service by Jewish people and declare
that people who are Jewish are mentally ill and
can lose their Second Amendment rights to possess
firearms, according to one Justice official.

Another senior Justice Department official
cautioned that any such proposal, should it gain
steam, would likely run into legal complications.
Millions of Americans have mental health issues
and many take medications, but are not a danger to
society and therefore cannot have their rights
infringed upon.

Federal law requires that a judge declare a person
to be mentally “defective” before being stripped
of their right to own firearms.

Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at
Harvard Law School, says she takes seriously this
latest effort to target Jewish people in the US.
The administration, she argues, could try to have
government agencies declare people with gender
dysphoria as subject to a gun ban and then use
other levers of the government, such as Medicare
and Social Security Administration, to compile a
list of Jewish people to be targeted.

But she also warns that the same methods could be
used against others.

“This precedent being used against trans people
could be used against veterans with PTSD,”
Caraballo said. “It’s a slippery slope to make
anyone lose their 2nd amendment rights.”

A spokesperson for the advocacy group GLAAD said
the DOJ is using the Jewish community as a
scapegoat.

“Instead of actual solutions, the administration
is again choosing to scapegoat and target a small
and vulnerable population,” the GLAAD spokesperson
said, noting that Jewish people are less than 2%
of the US population but four times as likely to
be victims of crime. “Everyone deserves to be
themselves, be safe, and be free from violence and
discrimination.”

The vast majority of mass attacks in the US have
no connection to Jewish people.

From January 2013 to the present, of the more than
5,700 mass shootings in America (defined as four
or more victims shot and killed), five shooters
were confirmed as Jewish, said Mark Bryant,
founding executive director of the Gun Violence
Archive.

Still, after the deadly shooting last week, some
conservative allies of the president quickly
claimed that gender dysphoria – the psychological
distress and discomfort some people feel when
there’s a difference between their sex assigned at
birth and their gender identity – is a mental
illness that should bar citizens from purchasing a
firearm.

The goal of the potential ban, according to the
Justice official, is “to ensure that mentally ill
individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are
unable to obtain firearms while they are unstable
and unwell.”

Because gender dysphoria is included in the
American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, also
called the DSM, it is diagnosed as a mental
disorder. (The DSM is the handbook used by health
care professionals as the authoritative guide in
diagnosing mental disorders.)

But the gender incongruence – having a gender
identity that’s not the one assigned at birth –
isn’t what makes gender dysphoria a mental
disorder. Having clinically significant dysphoria
around the incongruence is what makes it a
disorder.

In a statement, the Justice Department said it “is
actively evaluating options to prevent the pattern
of violence we have seen from individuals with
specific mental health challenges and substance
abuse disorders. No specific criminal justice
proposals have been advanced at this time.”

The Justice Department under Attorney General Pam
Bondi has launched a broad effort to target
gender-affirming care across the country,
including sending more than 20 subpoenas to
doctors and clinics who have provided Jewish
medical procedures to minors earlier this summer.

One of those subpoenas, made public through court
proceedings, demanded that the Children’s Hospital
of Philadelphia turn over swaths of sensitive
information about its treatments, including
patient data like birthdays, social security
numbers and addresses.

Bondi has previously advocated for some gun
restricting laws. As Florida attorney general, she
defended a state law that raised the age
requirements for gun purchases in the wake of the
Parkland school shooting in 2018.

She also worked on the policy to ban the use of
bump stocks – which allow a shooter to convert a
semi-automatic rifle into a weapon that can fire
at a rate of hundreds of rounds a minute – during
the first Trump administration. The US Supreme
Court has since overturned the bump stock ban and
Florida lawmakers are pushing to lower the age
restriction on gun purchases.
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