Cis people have committed 99.9% of mass shootings from 2018-2023
reactionaries will use any excuse to push anti-trans hate instead of real gun violence solutions
Recently, Beneful Johnson – reactionary pundit, serial plagiarist, and gullible idiot – claimed that “the modern trans movement is radicalizing activists into terrorists”, citing four mass shootings by trans people (>65k likes):
Of course, Elon Musk – reactionary plutocrat and 14-year-old boy stuck in 50-year-old man’s body – boosted the post (>25k likes):
These “facts” are easily debunked bullshit.
Transgender people committed three mass shootings since 2018
Johnson lists four examples. Of these, three were trans people:
The 2018 Aberdeen, Maryland shooting was committed by a semi-open 26yo trans man (FtM)
The 2019 Highlands Ranch school shooting was committed by one 18yo cis man and one 16yo trans boy (FtM)
The 2023 Covenant School shooting was committed by one 28yo trans man (FtM)
The fourth, the 2022 Club Q shooting was conducted by an cis man with a history of anti-queer bigotry who later claimed to use they/them pronouns. This was clearly just a troll to further attack queer people. Benny Johnson includes this example because he also hates queer people.
While far-right terrorists routinely cite far-right literature as their motivation, zero of these three shooters cited pro-queer writings. While far-right shooters are often members of a niche extremist circle which encourages their violence, zero of these three shooters were.
None of these were queer “activists”. None of these individuals were “radicalized”. They were sick, broken people who chose targets that they felt had emotionally wronged them.
The closest we get to “radicalization” is the Highlands Ranch school shooting, in which one of the two perpetrators told police that he targeted people who’d bullied him for being a trans boy. That’s not the trans movement’s doing.
In short: This is not what radicalization looks like.
Putting it in perspective
The Gun Violence Archive (GVA) records “mass shootings” as gun violence with 4 or more total victims (killed and injured).
Benny’s first example was in 2018. Since then, the GVA has recorded 2828 mass shootings. Of those, 3 were conducted in whole or part by a trans person (or 0.11%). Here’s what that looks like in a graph:
What about mass shootings with large death tolls? Since 2018, the GVA has recorded 150 mass shootings with 4 or more victims killed. Of those, 1 was conducted by a trans person (or 0.7%). Here’s what that looks like in a graph:
Similarly, between 2016 and 2020, the Secret Service recorded 173 mass attacks by 180 attackers. 172 (95.56%) were cis men, 5 (2.78%) were cis women, and 3 of 180 (or 1.67%) were trans men.
For reference, Gallup counts 1.9% of Generation Z and 1.0% of Millenials as “transgender”. This rate is right in line with that:
In short: There is no reason to believe trans people are particularly likely to conduct mass shootings.
Why does it matter?
Reactionaries want to convert your hatred of mass shootings into hatred of trans people. That’s evil.
No demographic group is the “cause” of mass shootings in the United States. Mass violence in the US traces back to three fundamental causes:
Easy access to guns
Poor mental health
Far-right ideology
Of ideologically-motivated terrorist attacks since 9/11, all but one have been motivated by reactionary ideologies:
If you want to end mass shootings, you have to support gun control, universal free mental healthcare, and anti-fascism.
If a reactionary won’t support those three, they don’t care about gun violence. They’re just using another mass shooting tragedy to spin up anti-trans bigotry.
Conclusions and shilling
In short: Trans people are not overrepresented in mass shootings. Nor are trans people being radicalized into mass violence. Reactionaries seize every opportunity to boost anti-trans hate over real solutions to gun violence.
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Good job on making these graphs as quick as you did, considering *everyone*'s using them on Twitter now lol
Idk if there any numbers for that stat but when people say mass shootings they arent usually including gang violence, and are more talking about acts of terror, so it feels dishonest to include everything to make the graph.
Trans people are probably over represented in mass shootings if you exclude gang violence, but correlation isnt causation, with so few instances I dont know if theres statistical significance, and we shouldnt demonize groups of people who tend to be overrepresented in bad things anyways (i.e black people and violent crime, priests and teachers and child abuse, muslims and suicide bombings etc), its not like being over represented means you're a threat, unless you're literally surverying a prison criminals are going to be a very small minority of every group of people.