Pro-Gun Tucker Carlson Pumps Brakes on Armed Transgender People

When it comes to transgender people arming themselves in light of the threat of harassment or attacks from hate groups, firearm advocate Tucker Carlson is skeptical, he made clear Thursday, insisting that doing so is “not the exercise of the Second Amendment” but rather “political hysteria.”

Carlson called attention to a recent NPR interview with gay and transgender people in New England who practice shooting as a self-defense measure. He then mocked the notion of white supremacist groups in that region, because, as he put it, “every state is blue.”

“Just to be clear: We are not against people—American citizens—carrying firearms,” Carlson continued. “We support it—including trans people. It’s fine. But what you’re watching here is not the exercise of the Second Amendment. What you’re watching here is political hysteria: fear ginned up on purpose with maximum dishonesty in order to get people in a state of agitation—armed people in a state of agitation. It doesn’t matter if they are trans or not, whatever that is.”

“It’s the same template always: scare the crap out of your voters, tell them that their lives are at risk, [and] encourage them to get guns,” said the Fox host, who once fretted that gun buybacks are “an incitement to violence” and would bring about “civil war.” “How do you think that ends?”

In the next breath, Carlson planted in his audience’s minds a scenario in which transgender people are armed not only with guns, but with F-35 fighter planes and tanks.

“You have to kind of wonder, like, what’s the limit to this?” he asked.

“So if trans people are in fear for their lives, and [if] every region of the country including New England…is crawling with Nazis now, why wouldn’t we be arming them as we are, say, Ukraine’s trans army? And there are famously trans people in Ukraine; they are very, very proud of that. So why stop with AR-15s? I mean, why not F-35s or tanks?” Carlson wondered. (The NPR story about those in the group called Rainbow Reload made no mention of any government body providing them with guns.)

Nevertheless, Carlson concluded: “We’re as for guns as you could possibly be, but this seems like an incitement.”