Another reason Project 2025 is so bad for women? Guns.

The 900-plus page misogynist manifesto lays out a radical “guns everywhere” agenda.

If you watched the Democratic National Convention last week, you heard themes of hope, freedom, and unity. You probably also heard about Project 2025, Trump’s dystopian plan for a second term. In speech after speech at the DNC, advocates and officials decried the extremist worldview outlined in Project 2025, from its promise to eliminate IVF to its attacks on racial equality and LGBTQ+ youth. (In an instantly iconic moment, Michigan Sen. Mallory McMorrow even carried a giant, hard-bound copy of Project 2025 onto the convention stage.)

Policymakers are right to sound the alarm. If Project 2025 is implemented, it will be devastating for women, families and feminists everywhere. Voters, especially women voters, need to understand these threats.

But while Project 2025’s plans for abortion and LGBTQ+ rights have rightly sparked outrage, within these pages lurks another, lesser-known threat to women, families, and communities: a radical “guns everywhere” agenda.

This is what’s at stake.

First, Project 2025 is explicit about putting more guns in schools. It would specifically support arming teachers with concealed weapons and hiring veterans, retired police officers, and other trained gun owners as armed guards. This would flood our schools with guns and force our teachers to become armed guards, all of which would make our children less safe.

The presence of guns in schools has led to suicides by teachers and staff, and there have been documented cases of accidental discharges. As a mother, I know what it’s like to live in fear of your child being injured or killed by a gun in their classroom. All of us, no matter who we are, deserve the right to raise our children in a safe environment free from gun violence.

Project 2025 would also dangerously weaken federal oversight of the gun industry, making our nation’s primary law enforcement agencies less able to address the flow of illegal guns. By moving the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from the Department of Justice to the Treasury Department, Project 2025 would reduce the threat of criminal prosecution for gun shops and sellers who break the law. Simply put, it would make policing illegal or dangerous gun sales nearly impossible, increase gun trafficking, and make gun crimes harder to solve.

When gun violence increases, women—and women of color in particular—are hit hardest.

Research shows that women of color are disproportionately affected by gun violence: while 2,600 women are killed by gun violence each year, women of color account for 61 percent of these deaths, despite making up only 40 percent of the total population. When gun violence increases, women, and women of color in particular, are the ones most affected.

Dismantling oversight of the gun industry would also increase the trafficking of guns across our southern border, despite Trump’s hypocritical fear-mongering about immigration. We know that most of the guns seized in Mexico, El Salvador, Belize, and Honduras came from the United States. Thanks to the Biden-Harris administration’s historic Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the Justice Department has now brought 280 cases and charges against those who smuggle guns to transnational drug cartels. Cutting the ATF out of the Justice Department would make this coordination impossible.

Finally, Project 2025 promises to implement concealed carry reciprocity legislation, rolling back states’ strict gun safety measures and increasing the risk of gun violence for everyone, regardless of where they live.

Does your community want to ban loaded and concealed weapons from parks, grocery stores, or daycare centers? If Project 2025 is implemented, it won’t be possible.

Did your state pass universal background checks, red flag laws, and secure storage requirements? If Project 2025 is implemented, that progress will be reversed.

Importantly, this includes the progress made by states in restricting access to guns for people under active domestic violence restraining orders, a law that has led to a 16 percent reduction in intimate partner homicides by firearm. We know that domestic violence is deadly, and this is especially true when there is a gun in the home. The mere presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation makes a woman five times more likely to be murdered. There is a reason that guns are the most common weapons used in domestic violence homicides, with female intimate partners being killed more often with a gun than by all other means combined.

As a mother, I know what it feels like to fear that your child will be injured or killed by a weapon in the classroom.

Kris Brown, President of Brady United Against Gun Violence

Ultimately, while Project 2025’s gun regulations may have flown under the radar, the extremist, pro-gun vision is clear. If Trump and his legislative allies have their way, ghost guns will flood our communities in unregulated gun markets, forcing the DOJ to ease up on gun dealers at our southern border. Schools will be filled with armed teachers and security guards, and so-called “self-defense” laws will be twisted to create a “shoot first, ask questions later” government mentality.

Gun violence is at the top of the agenda this election. Recent polling from the Brady Campaign shows that gun violence is the third most pressing issue facing voters right now. In fact, as we head into the start of the school year, a heartbreaking 80 percent of parents fear their child’s school could be the scene of a mass shooting. But we can change course. This Election Day, voters can choose between a deadly, shoot-first America or a country where we feel safer from violence.

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