Donald Trump is finally considering taking action to prevent mass shootings—not by enacting gun-control measures, but with a creepy proposal to somehow identify the “neurobehavioral signs” of “someone headed toward a violent explosive act.” According to the Washington Post, which first reported on the secret project under White House consideration Thursday, the administration has been briefed multiple times on a plan to create a new government agency whose powers would include sussing out individuals it regards as potential threats—a dystopian aim that will likely inspire blowback from both privacy and mental-health advocates.

In the wake of deadly shootings in El Paso and Dayton earlier this month, the president suggested he would be willing to support strengthened background checks and other gun-control measures. But he’s since backed away from those proposed reforms under pressure from the National Rifle Association, instead blaming mental illness for the violence. “We have to remember the gun doesn’t pull the trigger,” Trump told reporters Wednesday, remarking that the United States already has “very, very strong background checks.” “A person does. And we have great mental illness.”

And so, rather than pursue any number of sensible efforts to regulate guns, the Trump administration is reportedly weighing a proposal from the Suzanne Wright Foundation—a pancreatic cancer research organization founded by Trump friend Bob Wright—to establish a new government department called the Health Advanced Research Projects Agency, which the group has suggested could house a project to address gun violence that they’re calling Safe Home: “Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes.” Per the Post, the four-year, 40-to-60-million-dollar project would “attempt to use volunteer data” to detect signs of mental instability that may foreshadow shootings before they happen:

HARPA would develop “breakthrough technologies with high specificity and sensitivity for early diagnosis of neuropsychiatric violence,” says a copy of the proposal. “A multi-modality solution, along with real-time data analytics, is needed to achieve such an accurate diagnosis.”

The document goes on to list a number of widely used technologies it suggests could be employed to help collect data, including Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google Home. The document also mentions “powerful tools” collected by health-care provides like fMRIs, tractography and image analysis.

It’s not clear how the agency would detect these possible shooters, or precisely how the data would be collected. But Trump reportedly responded “very positively” to the proposal. “Every time this has been brought up inside the White House—even up to the presidential level—it’s been very well-received,” a person familiar with the discussions told the Post.

Outside the White House, the plan has already set off alarms. “The idea of the [Trump administration] creating a new agency focused on mental health led by a Trump-appointee, all for the purpose of advancing the view that mass gun violence is a mental health problem, should alarm us all,” remarked Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the N.A.A.C.P. legal defense fund. “This is scary and dangerous,” writer and disability rights activist Lydia X.Z. Brown warned Thursday. “Negatively racialized disabled people WILL be the most likely to be victimized/targeted by increased psychiatric and police surveillance, leading to confinement or death.”

Trump has repeatedly sought to blame mass shootings on mental illness while refusing to take action on gun control or white nationalism, the apparent motivation in the Texas Walmart shooting. However, experts have pointed out that mental health is just one factor in gun violence and is not a reliable predictor of mass shooters, most of whom fall outside that category. As Jeffrey Lieberman, chair of the Department of Psychology at Columbia University, told ABC News in a recent interview, Trump is “scapegoating people with mental illness as the cause of the problem completely inappropriately.”

More Great Stories from Vanity Fair

— The Trump-baiting Anthony Scaramucci interview that roiled the president

— Who is Ghislaine Maxwell? Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged enabler, explained

— Trump’s bizarre handwritten notes to Justin Trudeau

— The private-jet controversy plaguing the British royal family

— The real-life events that may have inspired Succession

— From the Archive: Another whodunit in the Hamptons

Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story.