It seems that our constitutional rights are conditional depending on your demographic, as Amazon appears to have removed t-shirts that say “Trans Rights or Else” with the trans pride flag being made up of four guns.
Twitter user @aphexindividual posted a tweet highlighting the removal of this shirt on Tuesday. They wrote, “If you wanted merchandise that showed support for trans rights and our second amendment, great news: amazon is now removing all of their listings for anything with trans colors / mentions of trans rights paired with guns” along with screenshots of the original selling page and the broken link page you get now.
If you do a quick Google search of the phrase “trans rights or else shirt,” you’ll be redirected to broken Amazon link pages. The shirt itself is still seemingly being sold by other unofficial vendors, but any page that had a link to the original Amazon store does not work anymore. Though we couldn’t confirm that Amazon is the one directly taking down these pages, it does seem highly unlikely that the vendors selling this merchandise would take it down themselves.
The move to take down a shirt like this is presumably linked to the recent shooting in Nashville where a trans man murdered three children and three adults at a private elementary school. The incident itself is undoubtedly horrifying and it wouldn’t be a surprise if we found out this shirt was taken down because Amazon, or any of the vendors, thought selling it was tacitly condoning violence.
However, there is a clear double standard when it comes to marginalized people and their second amendment rights. Conservatives will be the first ones to scream about Biden trying to take away their guns and how owning a firearm is one of our natural born rights that they’ll fight for even domestic abusers to have, but when a Black, brown, gay, or trans person shows off their newly acquired firearm, those same people who defended the second amendment will be the first ones trying to restrict it.
It’s a tale as old as time, honestly. In the 1960s, the militant black nationalist group known as the Black Panthers used their knowledge of California gun laws to arm themselves to the teeth with weapons that they would carry to protests and organization meetings. However, in a completely baffling move, the NRA or National Rifle Association, who are known as the leading champions for gun profits rights, fought alongside the government to help tighten gun laws so they could keep guns out of the hands of Black people. The NRA was so scared of Black people exercising one of their basic constitutional rights that they abandoned their core beliefs and worked hard to strip that right away from them.
I’m not saying the move to take down the shirt was wrong if it was done out of respect for the victims, but when a white nationalist goes on mass shooting spree, Amazon doesn’t take down shirts depicting the American flag made up of machine guns. No one seems to care about sensitivity towards gun culture until those guns are being brought by those in a marginalized group.
Keep the same energy for everyone, I’m just saying.
(featured image: Ethan Miller, Getty Images)
