On Friday afternoon, MSNBC host Katy Tur had on Mark Spies of the anti-gun website The Trace to argue against a Donald Trump administration proposal to place gun restrictions on transgenders to help prevent mass shootings. Spies found the idea "insane" and compared it to banning white men from buying guns to prevent suicide.
Tur set up the segment:
According to new reporting from The Washington Post, the Trump administration is considering preventing transgender people from owning guns. This is in the wake of the shooting last week at a Minneapolis Catholic school. A spokesperson tells NBC News, quote, "The DOJ is actively evaluating options to prevent the pattern of violence we have seen from individuals with specific mental health challenges and substance abuse disorders."
Spies was dismissive of the value of the Trump administration targeting transgenders, called the idea "insane," and denied that there was a disproportionate number of transgenders perpetrating such attacks:
MARK SPIES, THE TRACE: Well, I think it's not super-surprising because the broader administration already has a thing with respect to trans people in the first place. And then it's just generally been the Republican move for many years now, in the wake of a mass shooting, to like --
TUR: To latch onto specifics of that person to try to say it's that person, not the guns.
SPIES: Exactly. Unless it's -- well, especially if the person is not advantageous to some other narrative that they want to advance. So, again, we're talking about banning trans people from owning guns, which is insane obviously because there's no indicator at all that anyone who falls into that category is more likely to carry out a mass shooting, so, I mean, that's just an obvious thing to say.
He then added:
But, in general, mass shootings have been carried out by way more white supremacists, for example -- avowed white supremacists -- than trans people, and no one was ever talking about banning white supremacists from owning firearms. And that means, like, Dylan Roof carried out the Emanuel shooting in Charleston back in 2015 -- the Wal-Mart shooting in El Paso, the Buffalo shooting at the supermarket. I could go like on and on and on here, and the common threat throughout all of those is avowed white supremacy.
But, according to research by the right-leaning Crime Prevention Research Center, transgenders make up only about 0.73 percent of the adult population, but about five percent of mass shooting perpetrators between 2018 and 2024 -- a rate of about seven times that of non-transgenders.
Spies went on to bring up the high rate of gun suicide by white males and suggested that restricting transgenders would be like banning white males from owning guns to prevent suicide even though homicide victims do not choose to be victims while suicide is a voluntary action.
After hinting it that it would be better to ban semi-automatic guns if it were politically possible, he went on to recommend what he admitted would be "burdensome" psychological analyses of potential buyers before they would be allowed to acquire firearms.
Transcript follows:
MSNBC's Katy Tur Reports
September 5, 2025
2:35 p.m. Eastern
KATY TUR: According to new reporting from The Washington Post, the Trump administration is considering preventing transgender people from owning guns. This is in the wake of the shooting last week at a Minneapolis Catholic school. A spokesperson tells NBC News, quote, "The DOJ is actively evaluating options to prevent the pattern of violence we have seen from individuals with specific mental health challenges and substance abuse disorders."
Joining us now, senior staff writer at The Trace and contributing writer of Rolling Stone, Mike Spies. Mike, I wanted to have you back to talk about this because last week, in the wake of the shooting, in the moments after the shooting, we had you on, and we had a -- quite a lively discussion here about what it's going to take to stop gun violence. And on the one hand, you had someone bringing up that "this person was transgender or they had gender issues, gender dysmorphia [sic], and that's happened before, and they're targeting religious schools, and that's" -- dysphoria, excuse me -- "and that's part of the problem here." And then you had someone else saying, "No, it's a much broader problem than that -- it's everybody." Is it surprising to you that this administration is trying to go after, you know, a subsection of the American population?
MARK SPIES, THE TRACE: Well, I think it's not super-surprising because the broader administration already has a thing with respect to trans people in the first place. And then it's just generally been the Republican move for many years now, in the wake of a mass shooting, to like --
TUR: To latch onto specifics of that person to try to say it's that person, not the guns.
SPIES: Exactly. Unless it's -- well, especially if the person is not advantageous to some other narrative that they want to advance. So, again, we're talking about banning trans people from owning guns, which is insane obviously because there's no indicator at all that anyone who falls into that category is more likely to carry out a mass shooting, so, I mean, that's just an obvious thing to say.
But, in general, mass shootings have been carried out by way more white supremacists, for example -- avowed white supremacists -- than trans people, and no one was ever talking about banning white supremacists from owning firearms. And that means, like, Dylan Roof carried out the Emanuel shooting in Charleston back in 2015 -- the Wal-Mart shooting in El Paso, the Buffalo shooting at the supermarket. I could go like on and on and on here, and the common threat throughout all of those is avowed white supremacy.
TUR: But we haven't heard any desire -- any sources saying that they want to ban white supremacists from owning weapons.
SPIES: None, and actually there's another funny thing, too. We're only talking about mass shootings here, but, like, let's look at a different category of gun violence. Most gun death, year in and year out, is gun suicide -- usually like around 60 percent -- and every single year, 80 percent of gun suicides -- 80 percent -- are carried out by specifically white men. And white men only represent 30 percent of the population. That's like a wildly disproportionate figure. So if you wanted to -- that would be like saying, if you wanted to greatly reduce gun suicide -- let's say by 80 percent -- ban all white people from -- ban all white men specifically from owning firearms. Is that an idea that we're willing to entertain and float?
TUR: It is interesting because when you're talking about the 2nd Amendment, usually the argument is you can't go anywhere near banning groups of people from owning a gun because that would be a violation of their 2nd Amendment rights. It almost made me wonder whether this was a trial balloon for the administration either to see how the public might react to it -- how the 2nd Amendment supporters might react to it -- or to just put it out there that they're thinking about it, and they know what the problem is, and they want to do something about it.
SPIES: Right, it's hard to tell. I mean, it's definitely the case that some gun rights groups like the very hardline Gun Owners of America already put out a statement saying they're opposed to the ban because I think there's a clear understanding that any ban is discretionary. So like per just what we were talking about, again --
TUR: They do it for transgender people, the next thing the Trump administration could do it for white men because they're 80 percent.
SPIES: Exactly. Or just whatever the main indicators for.
TUR: Let's move to this side: What would stop this sort of gun violence?
SPIES: Well, again, if we're going to take --
TUR: Live in the reality we live in.
SPIES: Yeah, we're going to live in the reality which is, you know, take a -- banning semi-automatic weapons -- we won't talk about that because that's a third rail. But if you want to make a big difference, you have to account for psychological factors that actually predict violent behavior. And that is to say, like, "Is someone extremely impulsive? Does somebody have -- does someone have road rage issues? Does someone have anger management problems? Do they have alcohol problems?" These are all things that you would account for in an actual comprehensive background check as opposed to the system that we currently use.
TUR: That would be pretty burdensome.
SPIES: It would be pretty burdensome. It certainly would be pretty burdensome, but the question is: Do you want people to be safe? Or do you just want to expedite commerce? And that's the purpose of the background check system as it is now, to expedite commerce.
TUR: All right, Mike Spies, good to have you.
