I would be having an Open Forum on Ethics Alarms today no matter what day of the week it was, unfortunately. The massive theatrical project I am involved in to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the student musical theater organization I inadvertently founded as a first year law student is just a week away now, and today in a particularly challenging segment of production week for me.
And that isn’t all I have to do. I feel like Dick Van Dyke in “What a Way to Go!” (above).
If you are in the Washington, D.C. area or going to be here next week and would like to come to the show (there is only a “suggested donation”), email me and I’ll give you all the details.
Today there are at least two stories that are exploding Trump-obsessed heads all over, and both of them raise serious ethical, legal and constitutional issues. I’ll try to write about both, but you might want to start here yourself. Issue one is the reported Justice Department discussions on making it more difficult for trans individuals to obtain firearms in the wake of the second transsexual mass-shooter in recent years. I think that’s the right count. In a related issue, the news media, and even the AI bots, are in full defensive mode regarding trans shooters.
All I wanted was information about how many mass shootings have been verified as trans, and every sources began by telling me that it was a tiny percentage. Yes, I know that, because trans individuals are a tiny percentage of the population. Can you just answer the question, please? No, they can’t and won’t, because the American Left has embraced the trans community as well as the social pathogen that is artificially enlarging it. “Cue the outrage,” begins a USA Today article on the topic. “Right-wing commentators, congresspeople and influencers seized on a now-2-year old narrative that America is witnessing an “epidemic” of violence from the trans community. That is not true. Americans who identify as transgender do not attack and kill people at a disproportionate rate. And, according to several experts on extremism and mass shootings interviewed by USA TODAY, there’s no evidence gender identity had any influence on Robin Westman’s decision to shoot children at a Catholic school. Rather, the evidence the attacker left behind indicates a deep interest in mass shooters and mass shootings, suggesting involvement in an internet subculture that obsesses over these attacks and that has become known as “nihilistic violent extremism.” In fact, they still don’t know what Westman’s psychological issues—which is what transgenderism is—played in his/her violent outburst.
I call this “protesting too much.”
I know my position on the DOJ focus on trans individuals: I say it is pre-crime, and I say it is unethical and unconstitutional. The idea, see, is to add mass shootings to the so-called 80-20 issues Democrats are on the wrong side of (like illgal immigration and crime in major U.S. cities) because of their reflex opposition to anything Trump does, says or supports. But this is being gleefully framed by the Right as a “gotcha!” “Gotcha!” is not a justification for infringing on the Bill of Rights. Here’s an example:
…Given how Democrats react to anything Trump does, you know what’s coming: the anti-gun Left is going to sound like National Rifle Association members. They will likely devote endless hours to full-throated defenses of gun ownership and Second Amendment rights. The president is setting the stage for the Democrats to cannibalize their anti-gun positions, sacrificing generations of activism for transgender gun rights. The Left was ALWAYS wrong about gun rights; we just had to wait a long time to find an issue where the opposition could self-implode on this one, and they will.
How clever. Using human beings, in this case trans individuals, who have enough problems as it is, as props for a some political jujitsu on guns. Kant would not approve, and neither do I.
The other issue is the military killing everyone on a boat in international waters who were believed to be smuggling drugs. That’s a gift link.
Over to you, Clarence….
Ethics Alarms 
I initially worried that Trump’s trolling on the trans/gun thing was a bridge too far, but the AUC already uses the most ridiculous ideas to infringe on 2A rights, and thus far he’s gotten the democrats to defend illegal criminal gang members and domestic criminal activity. If he can get them to defend second amendment rights at the same time, he needs to be added to Mount Rushmore.
Regarding the drug dealers in open waters, I’ve got no problem. Those chains of command are pretty robust. Yes, mistakes were made in the GWOT, but those mistakes will be harder to make with loads of giant bundles in the equivalent of cigarette boat that you know they had intel on from the source.
Yes, American drug addicts provide the demand, but simple economics tells you that pricing can create demand, which it has, to the most addicting substances on the planet, produced en masse in China and shipped to the cartels, with local governments like Portland and Colorado encouraging it. It’s absurd.
I hope they burned a good long time in massive agony as the boat was aflame before burning in hell for eternity. The only thing worse than drug dealers are human traffickers.
“the AUC already uses the most ridiculous ideas to infringe on 2A rights, and thus far he’s gotten the democrats to defend illegal criminal gang members and domestic criminal activity.”
Lefty, not to put too fine a point to it, is $#!tting themselves sideways; to wit: Posted to X: (bolds.caps/italics mine)”At a virtual meeting this afternoon lasting just over two hours—attended by Democrat Party influencers Olivia Julianna, Harry Sisson, JoJo From Jerz, Aaron Parnas, Micah Erfan, and others—THE MOOD WAS ONE OF PANIC AND DISARRAY over how to respond to reports that Trump’s DOJ is exploring a gun ban for individuals with gender dysphoria.
“According to a source familiar with the discussions, MEMBERS WERE SHARPLY DIVIDED ON MESSAGING. Sisson and Parnas pushed for adopting a fully pro–Second Amendment stance, while Julianna and Erfan argued for a more pragmatic approach—emphasizing the threats of violence faced by transgender people and their ‘SPECIAL NEED’ FOR FIREARMS, while still advocating for broader restrictions on the general population.
“At several points, tensions flared and the discussion grew heated. JoJo lashed out at Sisson, calling him an ‘insensitive a-hole’ in light of the recent shooting.
“By the end of the call, THE CONSENSUS WAS TO SIDESTEP THE ISSUE ALTOGETHER FOR NOW–SHIFTING FOCUS TO ATTACKING RFK Jr AND PIVOTING THE CONVERSATION TOWARD EPSTEIN WHEN PRESSED.”
PWS
Trump opened with such a good one: he got liberals to hate the most successful electric car by a wide margin. It’s going to be hard to top.
Red Flag laws really aren’t effective if they can’t consider democrat voter registration and other mental disorders as part of the criteria…
The alleged plan to keep guns out of the hands of trans individuals is unconstitutional and unethical, IMO. But the trolling is epic. I had to laugh.
And you’re right–actual trans people do have enough problems. A major one is the seditious interests using mentally ill “trans” “activists” to further dark goals.
The Federalist has an article that claims that Trump’s trans gun ban does nothing but play into the hands of Democrat’s gun banning schemes. The better solution, according to this article, is to reclassify gender delusion as a mental illness, which would disqualify somebody diagnosed as such from buying a gun.
https://thefederalist.com/2025/09/04/dojs-rumored-trans-gun-ban-does-nothing-but-play-right-into-democrats-hands/
Auron MacIntyre tweeted “We do not need gun control but trans control”.
As I am not a lawyer or a politician I am going to hold off on which of the two approaches is wiser, the Federalist’s or the President’s approach.
As mass killings also occur in other countries, my gut feeling is that we should focus on the shooters and their mental condition as a root cause. Guns do not go off all by themselves.
Neither is wise because there are so many people who fall under the category of mental illness that we may not want to refuse gun ownership to all of them. Many Americans manage mental illnesses every day and are no danger to anyone. Do we deny guns to mothers experiencing post-partem depression? People with mild anxiety? People with ADHD? Crime victims suffering from PTSD?
The term ‘gender delusion’ is not a recognized medical or psychological term, so asserting someone fits that characteristic, whatever it is, would not be sufficient to prevent gun ownership under current federal law.
The term ‘gender dysphoria’ is a recognized psychological condition, found in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It’s described as a marked incongruence between a person’s assigned gender and their experienced and/or expressed gender. However, even that diagnosis is not an automatic bar to gun ownership under federal law. The Second Amendment is pretty strong, and there would have to be evidence of that the individual is adjudicated as a mental defective, and that would require a court, board, or other lawful authority to determine that the person is a danger to themself or others.
In the unlikely event that The Federalist proposal were to gain any traction and be enacted in law, there surely would be court cases contesting it, most likely successful cases.
In light of the military boat strike, we have this convenient report. Can it be trusted?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/05/commando-team-north-korea-civilians-2019-mission
1: Source is NY Times. Strike one.
2: It’s a copy of a previous Republican order. Strike two, with enhancement of no mention of Obama’s drone strike of a U.S. citizen abroad.
3: Anonymous sources, no documented value, mysterious loss of life isn’t unusual for the profession–you must prove a negative to independently corroborate the story.
Smells like a story floated to keep people from noticing the “norms” violated by some other deep state president.
The Philadelphia Eagles’ NFL season opener against the Dallas Cowboys started with the Black National Anthem. This was not well received by the public. The fans inside the stadium showed little respect for the anthem with the continuous chatter of the crowd almost drowning out the singing. People were walking up and down with refreshments. Many on social media slammed the league for playing the anthem before the season opener. ‘Here we go with the DEI ‘lift every voice and sing’ anthem,’ one furious football fan wrote on X. ‘Ridiculous. Sing the national anthem!’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/nfl/article-15067967/NFL-fans-slam-divisive-Black-National-Anthem-Eagles-season.html
My question: is woke reaching an end in pro sports?