The Trump administration’s proposed new rules on gun ownership are intended to scare transgender people out of buying weapons, leading pro-Second Amendment activists say.
A new rule enacted by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives would mean all new gun owners must list their birth sex on mandatory purchase paperwork, even if they have legally or medically changed genders.
Such a rule would make it easier for ATF to gather lists of trans gun owners, simply by identifying where names appear to conflict with the listed sex, according to firearms policy experts.
It could also deter trans people from buying guns legally, since complying with paperwork would create a “Catch 22” situation — and a false statement comes with the threat of federal charges and prison time, the experts said.
"Just the announcement is going to have a chilling effect," Patrick G. Eddington, a senior fellow in homeland security and civil liberties at the Cato Institute, told The Independent.
"It's pretty clear that [Trump's team] want to try to collect data on individuals who don't fit the regime's idea of who is male and female... [creating] a de facto registry of people by gender identity."
The current status of this policy change is unclear. Having first confirmed it to Oregon’s Eugene Weekly newspaper last June, ATF officials recently softened their language in response to questions fromThe Independent.
But they confirmed they were updating the policies in line with Trump's January 2025 executive order, which declared that the federal government would no longer recognize trans identities.
It follows reports that the Department of Justice, which includes the ATF, is weighing rules to bar or restrict trans Americans from owning guns by declaring them inherently mentally unfit to possess firearms.
A series of high-profile mass shootings involving trans suspects — including at a Catholic church in Minnesota, a Tennessee private school, and a hockey rink in Rhode Island — have killed at least 20 people, including a number of young children, in recent years.
Statistics show that the overwhelming majority of mass shooters are young white males. However, corners of conservative media and right-wing activists have called for trans people to be locked up in mental institutions or treated as a domestic terror threat.
Senior administration officials have been careful to neither embrace nor reject such calls from conservatives. “The administration is taking it seriously. All causes of violence,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, when asked by a Daily Wire reporter last September if the FBI would investigate “transgender violence.”
Fox News host Jesse Watters also asked Vice President JD Vance if the “militant transgender movement” was a “domestic terrorist threat” last September.
Vance dodged the question, saying he didn’t “know enough about that particular organization” but that trans people and left-wingers were increasingly embracing “terrorist” ideas.
In February 2025, the Department of Homeland Security scrapped rules against spying on people based solely on their gender identity. And in December, then attorney general Pam Bondi ordered the FBI to go after “domestic terrorists” from Antifa — a loose, leaderless anti-fascist movement that she claimed was partly driven by “radical gender ideology.”
Meanwhile, since Trump’s return to office, the Justice Department has subpoenaed hospitals for information about trans patients. In recent years Republican-run states have sought to compile lists of trans people via their medical records or driver’s license data.
According to FBI data, there has been a rise in anti-LGBT+ hate crimes over the past five to ten years, in line with a resurgence of anti-trans politics in the U.S.
When combined with a string of fatal shootings by federal immigration agents, firearms trainers and activists say these factors have caused a surge in LGBT+ people, communities of color, and liberals buying guns and joining gun clubs.
Erin Palette, national coordinator of the LGBT+ gun group Pink Pistols and a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights, has watched it happen.
"Interest in joining Pink Pistols chapters, and creating new ones or reviving old ones, has surged in a manner I can only describe as explosive, and that started literally the day after Trump's re-election," Palette told The Independent.
"If exercising that right requires submission to a government-mandated sex classification that can be used to identify and target a minority group, or chill their lawful conduct, then this policy isn't about safety or identification. It's about targeting a minority for being a minority, and the Constitution does not permit that."
‘Inherently discriminatory and unconstitutional’
In the midst of these rising tensions, the potential ATF rule change could have a big impact.
Buying a gun from a licensed dealer requires filling out a Firearms Transaction Record, otherwise known as ATF Form 4473. Lying on the form is a felony, punishable by up to $250,000 in fines and five years in jail — or ten years if the lie is deemed “material” to the sale’s legality.
ATF Form 4473 asks the new gun owner to list their "sex" and ethnicity. If the person has changed their sex on their identity documents — something most states allow — that would theoretically mean they should fill out the form to match their new identity.
But that has been complicated by Trump’s executive order last January. Within months, ATF officials confirmed that they intended to update Form 4473 to require buyers’ sex assigned at birth — which may be different from other legal IDs.
“The Firearm Transaction Form is in the process of being updated and, consistent with the President’s executive order […], firearm purchasers shall identify themselves by their biological sex on the [form],” an ATF spokesperson stated to Eugene Weekly reporter Eve Weston last June, according to emails shared withThe Independent.
More recently, the ATF has changed its language. In response to questions from The Independent, a spokesperson said on April 17 that the agency was “updating and simplifying” Form 4473 to make it “more concise and user-friendly”, including “appropriate changes” to comply with Trump’s executive order.
That order is unambiguous. It specifically requires all federal forms to ask about birth sex only, and bans them from in any way promoting “gender ideology” — such as the “false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa.”
The ATF did not respond to follow-up questions, while the White House and the Department of Justice did not respond at all. As of April 22, Form 4473 remains the same.
Firearms Transaction Records are held by gun vendors, not the federal government. Moreover, federal law prohibits the government from building or maintaining any centralized, searchable registry of gun owners.
But Palette argued that this information could still be "used to identify and target a minority group" because of the ATF’s broad inspection powers.
While there is no indication that the ATF is doing such inspections, the Trump administration has pushed to expand surveillance by the DHS, such as by amassing smartphone location data from commercial data brokers and automated license plate recognition cameras. Some insiders told The Financial Times that it has eroded internal safeguards in order to do so.
Beyond that, Palette says the proposed change would put trans people in an "impossible bind".
If a trans person filled in Form 4473 with their gender identity (and potentially what is listed on their state ID documents), it could lead to a charge of making a false statement in connection with a firearm sale and up to ten years in prison.
But then again, listing their sex assigned at birth could be treated as false information, since it no longer matches their appearance, body, or official documents. Some trans people may no longer have ID that matches their birth sex anymore.
Intersex people, who are often born with ambiguous sex characteristics and assigned a legal sex that they may well reject in later life, could end up in the same position.
"That Catch-22 is not a safety measure. It is a trap," Palette says.
Eddington has similar concerns. As a staunch Second Amendment advocate who supports a radical reduction in firearms regulations, he believes it may be unconstitutional for ATF Form 4473 to ask any demographic questions at all, and accuses the Trump administration of “betraying” gun owners.
In this case, he says the "confusion and ambiguity" of the proposed ATF rule change would create a "felony trap" for trans gun buyers.
"You're talking about giving ATF agents and/or US attorneys a lot of latitude to essentially assert that someone made a false statement about their status," he said.
"What they seem to be doing with this policy is attempting to chill constitutionally compliant firearms purchase by individuals who we know are at increased risk of violence. So it's a pernicious proposal on multiple levels."
The proposed ATF rule would face the full federal rule-making process, which includes publication in the Federal Register and a period of public comment.
But if realized, both Palette and Eddington fear it will deter trans people from joining the ranks of American gun owners — and both believe that is the intention.
"The idea that it's okay for the federal government to engage in an inherently discriminatory policy against people on the basis of their characteristics is not simply offensive, it strikes at the very heart of the entire reason for having the Second Amendment," says Eddington.
"It's facially unconstitutional, but this regime doesn't care about the law. It thinks it is the law."
The irony, as Palette points out, is that Form 4473 was changed during Trump's first term to add “non-binary” as an option for the sex question.
"The Trump administration raised no objection at the time, or at any point before he left office in January 2021," she says.
Surge in left-leaning gun clubs
Palette does not provide the membership numbers for Pink Pistols as a privacy measure. But the group’s website listed 49 active chapters this month, a 68 percent increase from November 2024.
"I've never seen a surge like this before," Thomas Boyer, of Pink Pistols San Francisco chapter, told NPR in November.
David Phillips, a trainer for the Liberal Gun Club, also told NPR that its membership had close to doubled in the year since Trump was re-elected. The club now has 4,500 members with four times as many requests for training.
The National Association for Gun Rights, a conservative firearms lobby group that preaches “no compromise” on the Second Amendment, said the spike was now "common knowledge" in the firearms community.
Individuals interviewed by NPR cited fears of civil unrest and violence from right-wing militants.
The killing of Minneapolis ICU nurse and anti-ICE protester Alex Pretti by immigration agents in January also put many progressives on edge.
Pretti was legally carrying a holstered handgun when he was killed. Federal officials falsely claimed Pretti had been “brandishing” it — despite video evidence to the contrary. Trump said he “shouldn't have been carrying it”, sparking condemnation from the National Rifle Association.
Afterward Pretti’s killing, members of the National African American Gun Association, LA Progressive Shooters, and the pro-diversity gun group, A Better Way 2A, told CNN that they had seen a spike in bookings, inquiries, or membership applications.
“People join when they’re scared,” said NAAGA founder and president Philip Smith.
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