Firearm ban could impact correctional officer’s job with CDCR

The right of transgender individuals to possess firearms is under discussion at the Justice Department due to a recent shooting at the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The shooter, a transgender woman, killed two children and injured 21 others, including children, reported CNN.

Some members of the transgender community at SQRC believe the administration’s focus on transgender gun rights reflects Trump’s broader agenda toward transgender persons.

“He [Trump] wants to paint trans people as dangerous, mentally unstable, and unsuitable to bear arms because it’s a convenient distraction from his fascist expansion of the federal government,” said resident Angie Gordon.

Trump’s recent executive orders sought to bar transgender persons from military service and ordered federal prisons to house transgender inmates in facilities corresponding to their gender at birth, said the report.

According to Justice officials, the objective of the gun ban is “to ensure that those who are mentally ill, including those diagnosed with gender dysphoria, are unable to obtain firearms because they are unstable and unwell,” reported Alana Richer of The Associated Press.

Richer clarifies that being transgender does not mean that one is mentally ill. The reference to gender dysphoria comes from the American Psychiatric Association’s “Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” which calls gender dysphoria a mental disorder.

“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,” Richer wrote.

The DSM reads, “Gender dysphoria is a general descriptive term referring to the distress that may accompany the incongruence between one’s experienced or expressed gender and one’s assigned gender, more specifically used as a diagnostic category.”

For both male and female persons, biologically at birth, less than one in 1,000 suffers gender dysphoria across that population, according to the DSM.

SQ Correctional Officer Hauwert said if the DOJ successfully bans trans people from access to firearms, it could have a direct impact on her because her work requires carrying a firearm at times.

“The right to carry is enshrined into the United States Constitution. If we feel our life is in danger, we should be able to exercise our right to bear arms as law-abiding citizens when needed,” said Hauwert.

Gun rights advocacy group Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms called the Justice Department discussion “disturbing.” The National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America oppose any blanket proposal that targets a specific group, reported The AP.

“The Second Amendment isn’t up for debate,” the NRA said in a social media post.  “NRA does not, and will not, support any policy proposals that implement sweeping guns bans that arbitrarily strip law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights without due process.”

Mark Bryant, founding executive director of the Gun Violence Archive, said that there have been more than 5,700 mass shootings in America from 2013 to present, with only five of those shooters confirmed as transgender.

In a statement, the Justice Department said it is evaluating options but has not yet advanced any specific proposals.

“We are more likely to be the victims of gun violence than being the perpetrator,” said Gordon.