When Justice Department officials anonymously floated the idea of prohibiting gun possession by transgender people last week, they may have hoped to score points with President Donald Trump's base or get a rise out of "woke" Democrats. Instead, they elicited howls of outrage from every major gun rights group.

It is not hard to see why. This half-baked proposal, which has no obvious statutory basis, is flagrantly inconsistent with "the right of the people" to "keep and bear arms"—a right that Trump claims he is keen to protect.

The immediate impetus for internal discussions of disarming transgender Americans was the August 27 shooting that killed two children and injured 21 other people at the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis. Police identified the perpetrator, who killed herse

See Full Page