Inside the 900-plus-page mysoginist manifesto is a radical “guns everywhere” agenda.
If you tuned into the Democratic National Convention last week, you heard themes of hope, freedom and unity. You also almost certainly heard about Project 2025—Trump’s dystopian plan for a second term. In speech after speech at the DNC, advocates and officials condemned the extremist worldview outlined in Project 2025, from its promise to eliminate IVF to its attacks on racial equity and LGBTQ+ youth. (In an instantly iconic moment, Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow even brought a massive, bound copy of Project 2025 onto the convention stage with her.)
Policymakers are right to sound the alarm. If implemented, Project 2025 would be devastating for women, families and feminists everywhere. Voters—and particularly women voters—need to understand these threats.
But while Project 2025’s abortion and LGBTQ+ rights plans have rightfully garnered outrage, there’s another, lesser-known threat to women, families and communities buried within these pages: a radical “guns everywhere” agenda.
Here’s what’s at stake.
First, Project 2025 is explicit about putting more guns in schools. Specifically, it would support the arming of teachers with concealed weapons, and hire veterans, retired police officers and other trained gun owners as armed guards. This would flood our schools with firearms and force our teachers to become armed guards—all of which would make our kids less safe.
The presence of guns in schools has already resulted in firearm suicides by teachers and staff, and there have been documented cases of unintentional discharges. As a mother, I know how it feels to live in fear that your child will be hurt or killed by a gun in their classroom. All of us—no matter who we are—deserve the right to raise our children in safe environments free from gun violence.
Project 2025 would also dangerously weaken federal oversight of the gun industry, crippling the ability of our nation’s top law enforcement agencies to crack down on the flow of illegal weapons. By moving the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from the Department of Justice to Treasury, Project 2025 would erode the threat of criminal prosecution for gun stores and sellers who break the law. Put simply, it would make oversight of illegal or dangerous gun sales nearly impossible, increase gun trafficking and make it more difficult to solve gun crimes.
When gun crimes surge, women—and particularly women of color—are most hurt.
Research shows that women of color are disproportionately impacted by gun homicides: While 2,600 women are killed in gun homicides each year, women of color make up 61 percent of these deaths—despite being only 40 percent of the population overall. When gun crimes surge, women—and particularly women of color—are most hurt.
Gutting oversight of the gun industry would also increase gun trafficking across our southern border—despite Trump’s hypocritical fear-mongering on immigration. We know that the majority of crime guns recovered in Mexico, El Salvador, Belize and Honduras came from the United States. Now, thanks to the Biden-Harris administration’s historic Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the Department of Justice has brought 280 cases and counting against those trafficking guns to transnational drug cartels. If ATF is moved out of DOJ, this coordination becomes impossible.
Finally, Project 2025 promises to enact concealed carry reciprocity legislation—rolling back states’ strong gun safety measures and increasing the risk of gun violence for everyone, no matter where you live.
Does your community want to keep loaded and hidden guns out of parks, grocery stores or childcare centers? If Project 2025 is implemented, you can’t.
Has your state passed universal background checks, red flag laws and safe storage requirements? If Project 2025 is implemented, this progress gets undone.
Importantly, this includes states’ progress to restrict access to guns by people who are subject to an active domestic violence restraining order—a law that has led to a 16 percent reduction in intimate partner homicides involving firearms. We know that domestic violence is deadly, and this is particularly true when there is a gun in the house. The mere presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation makes it five times as likely that a woman will be killed. There’s a reason firearms are the most common weapons used in domestic violence homicides, with female intimate partners more likely to be murdered with a gun than by all other means combined.
As a mother, I know how it feels to live in fear that your child will be hurt or killed by a gun in their classroom.
Kris Brown, president of Brady United Against Gun Violence
Ultimately, while Project 2025’s gun provisions may have flown under the radar, its extremist, pro-gun vision is clear. If Trump and his legislative allies get their way, ghost guns will flood our communities in unregulated gun markets, with the DOJ forced to ease up on gun traffickers across our southern border. Schools will be full of armed teachers and guards, and so-called “self-defense” laws will become so twisted as to foment a “shoot first, ask questions later” national, government-backed mentality.
This election, gun violence is top of mind. Recent polling by the Brady Campaign found that gun violence is the third most pressing issue to voters right now. In fact, as we head into back-to-school season, a heartbreaking 80 percent of parents fear their child’s school could be the site of a mass shooting. But we can change course. This Election Day, voters can choose between a deadly “shoot first” America, or a nation where we feel safer from violence.
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