Armed Minorities are Harder to Oppress: The Case for Trans Community Defense
As the rhetoric against transgender people escalates and the Department of Justice discusses the removal of our rights, the transgender community needs to learn to defend itself.
by Jane Migliara Brigham
Before his body was even cold, various fascist public figures were trying to find a connection between the assassination of Charlie Kirk and trans people at large. This comes off of the heels of a recent mass shooting in Minneapolis by a detransitioner, which was also blamed on us. These shootings are being used as a pretext to ban transgender people from owning firearms. The justification is that it prevents those with mental illnesses from getting guns, as bigots and psychologists are fond of declaring us mentally ill. This is contradicted by internal discussions in the DOJ, with one official allegedly saying “We’re not playing semantics with words like dysphoria. We’re talking about trannies, and we don’t think they should have guns”. This support was also seen at the local level, with similar proposals coming from the Pierce County Sheriff, whose agency would likely be responsible for enforcing such a ban.
Trans people are no strangers to discrimination and double standards. Even as gun organizations like the National Rifle Association and others oppose the ban on constitutional grounds, the false idea that we are mentally ill has made many wary of defending us and our rights.
We should not mince words about why The Trump Administration wants to ban us from owning guns. The fascist movement behind it has made it clear that it wants to “remove transgenderism from public life”, as Micheal Knowles put it before a cheering audience. Project 2025, the blueprint of the current government, calls our very existence pornography as it calls for pornography to be banned. The implication is that you remove the idea of transgenderism from society by removing the people that embody it, aka trans people ourselves. An important step in this process is stopping the group from being able to defend themselves, as the Nazi government did to Jews in 1938. It is reasonable to assume that the Trump Administration has similar aims for us.
Fascist governments do their best to disarm minorities because armed minorities are harder to oppress. This is why much of the foundation of our gun control laws were designed to disarm black dissidents, especially the Black Panthers. As trans people begin serving as a scapegoat for the fascist movement, we can see the same disarming playbook being used against us.
The proper response to such a threat is an armed community defense. When enough people in an area or among a given group are armed and willing to use their guns to defend their fellows, then the whole group becomes part of an armed community defense. The more people that are under the defense umbrella, and the more people who contribute to it, the more of a deterrent we can make against the bullies who terrorize us.
This is why trans gun ownership is so important in keeping us safe from a hostile government. We are not ruled by just people; we are ruled by bullies, and the only thing a bully respects is force. To ward off the violence of the state, and the bigots who work in concert with it, we need the capacity to defend ourselves from their violence. That means getting guns.
Community defense and gun ownership go hand in hand. Although we are taught to think of civil rights movements in the United States as peaceful, the movement’s demands came in a context of the whites in power fearing violence if they were not met. The fight to end slavery would not have been won without the backing of a massive army to free the enslaved. The fight to end Jim Crow was marked by rebellions all over the country, with cities like Detroit and dozens of others erupting into armed struggles to break free of tyranny. Famously, the Black Panther Party used armed patrols of their neighborhoods as a means of uniting their communities against police occupation.
Trans people ought to look to the armed movements of the past for examples. We do not have to commit to any particular action. The ability to demonstrate that we can fight back against tyranny will serve as deterrence against abuse. It’s all well and good to convince people that the cause of trans liberation is just, but we don’t live in a world of arguments, we live in a world of power. Power might be swayed by arguments, but ultimately, power grows out of the barrel of a gun. To deny trans people the right and ability to get guns is to deny us self-determination over our lives. This is exactly what Trump and the fascists want.
The solution is simple: Arm the dolls. Those at the greatest risk of abuse have the greatest need to defend themselves and their communities. As trans people, we know damn well that we need to defend ourselves.
I will be spending the weekend practicing my shooting with my local community. I hope you consider doing so as well.
Jane Migliara Brigham is a recent graduate with a master’s degree in Peace and Conflict Studies. Her debut book “The Transsexual Nation” is expected to be released in 2026. You can follow her on Bluesky at @janethebane.meangirls.online