The battle for trans equality in North Carolina just took a surprising turn

“We think conservatives will stop worrying about what’s between someone’s legs when they are reasonably assured a gun is on their hip.” — State Rep. Sharon Wintermeyers (D)

RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA — Democrats in the Tar Heel state believe they may have found themselves a solution to HB2, the anti-LGBT law that has embroiled the state in a public relations nightmare. The law, which allows LGBT people to be discriminated against in a number of ways, has gotten so much attention because of its attempt to confine transgender people to the the restroom designed for their birth gender, instead of letting them choose a bathroom they comfortable with according to their gender identity. But Democrats in the state legislature now believe that if they arm every transgender person in the state, that should “ease tensions quite a bit,” as North Carolina Democratic Party sub-vice deputy media liaison Sharon Wintermeyers told reporters this week.

“We Democrats get it,” Wintermeyers told the press, “conservatives are just looking out for their kids’ safety. They feel threatened by strange people in the restroom. But we also understand nothing makes conservatives feel more safe and secure than a gun. So we decided, naturally, the best way to solve this problem is to simply issue every transgender person in the State of North Carolina a gun.”

Rep. Wintermeyers announced that in order to pay for the necessary firearms a tax would be raised on ammunition sales. She said that conservatives in the state who balk at the new tax will “have to ask themselves if paying the new ammo tax is worth getting guns into everyone’s hands” because “obviously that’s what they feel makes someone trustworthy, having a gun.”

“Some have suggested this program might give Second Amendment enthusiasts the idea that they can just claim to be transgender to get a free gun,” Wintermeyer said, “but it seems like a really stupid argument to make that someone would willingly declare themselves as an oppressed minority just for some perceived benefit. Only idiots would make that kind of argument, right? Like, only totally bonafide fucking morons would ever suggest that someone would volunteer to be part of a repressed minority class just so they can take advantage of a law that has never stopped them from doing that thing in the first place anyway? Yeah, that’s what I thought. A really fucking dumb argument.”

Reached for comment, Republican State Rep. Thom Thompaulsen admitted that the Democrats in his state “really have one over” on the Republicans.





“I mean, we all know that guns are the most amazing and diversely useful tool in the history of mankind,” Thompaulsen said, “and that they were literally given to man by God in a dream, and that they will literally cure cancer one day. So that’s why it’s so important to us that all Americans are packing heat.” But, Thompaulsen said, “Republicans also have a hard time considering anyone American if they don’t have the same exact rigid set of Judeo-Christian values we do, so this one’s a toughie!”

Ms. Wintermeyers says she believes with “every fiber” in her being that once all the trans people in North Carolina have guns, tensions will almost immediately cease.

“Isn’t that what conservatives tell us about guns,” she asked rhetorically, “that they instantly make a situation calmer? Well, we want to calm everyone down. And since school shootings aren’t enough to get conservatives fired-up about protecting kids, we figured that giving guns to trans people would kill two ideological birds with one stone.”

Rep. Wintermeyers said she will withdraw her proposed bill if and when HB2 is repealed, whether by Supreme Court ruling, or by voters in the state in the future. This story is developing.