The prospect of a Department of Justice-directed gun ban for transgender individuals is as baseless as it is unconstitutional. Trans people are not intrinsically criminals — they’re our neighbors, friends and family. To single them out for disarmament is to strip away a fundamental right based on personal expression alone, a logic indistinguishable from the discriminatory policies of an era we claim to have left behind.

The Second Amendment does not carve exceptions for people whose existence makes others uncomfortable or those who bear physiological commonality with a select few who have committed inexcusable acts. Equal protection under the law, to be true, must stand as precisely that — equal. To suggest otherwise is to trample not only on the rights of transgender people, but on the constitutional fabric that protects all innocent Americans from arbitrary, prejudicial government overreach.

Such proposals are clearly not about public safety, for they are oozing with stigma. They reinforce the false narrative that being transgender is, itself, a form of instability or insecurity. This is not engineered by plausible evidence, but by prejudice.

What is truly dangerous is a government emboldened to decide which identities are worthy of certain ubiquitous constitutional rights, and which are not.

If we permit conversations like these, who will be targeted next? Today it may be transgender Americans; tomorrow, another community whose politics or existence makes those in power uneasy.

The right to keep and bear arms — like the rights to speak freely, to vote and to live openly — is imperative to the sustainability of our system and cannot be subject to the whim of supermajority intolerance under the veneer of concern.

Daniel A. C. McBride is a sophomore at Washington College and the former chairman of the Maryland Federation of College Republicans.

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