Trans people have committed 0.1% of mass shootings from 2018-2024
rightists want to convert your hate of gun violence into hate of trans people
In 2023 March, I wrote about rightists’ claim that “the modern trans movement is radicalizing activists into terrorists”. Their evidence? A list of four mass shootings conducted by alleged transgender people.
In reality, the three genuine cases showed no signs of transgender-based radicalization – and 99.9% of mass shootings were conducted by non-transgender 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.
On 2024 January 4, a mass shooter killed 1 and injured 5 at Perry High School in Iowa. This is horrific.
Because the shooter may or may not have been nonbinary, rightists have wasted zero time and begun making the exact same arguments as in 2023.
Is the queer movement radicalizing our youth into terrorism?
Was the Perry High School shooter transgender?
Possibly. In one social media profile, he used he/they pronouns. In another, he used a woman as an avatar. In another, he expressed some interest in medical transition.
We can’t yet know for sure. There is no conclusive evidence. However, the absence of hard evidence has not stopped the right from claiming that the shooter was radicalized into violence by queer ideology.
Has the right’s argument improved?
No. Rightists continue to claim that there is an epidemic of mass violence from transgender people. They cannot provide evidence to prove it. Let’s walk through some examples:
Andy Ngo (1400k followers) is a human hose of reactionary misinformation. Ngo called the Perry High School shooter “the latest in a string of US mass shooters who are genderqueer, like the Colorado Springs shooter” (6.3k likes):
Ngo has told you two lies in twenty words:
Not a string: This mass shooting may be the fourth by a non-cisgender person in the past decade, which held ~4400 mass shootings. There is no evidence linking this person’s gender to the mass shooting.
Colorado Springs: The 2023 Colorado Springs Club Q shooter was a anti-queer reactionary who intentionally killed queer people in his mass shooting. Afterwards, he claimed to be transgender as one last attack toward queer people. Ngo knows this. He’s just lying to you, because the conservative intellectual ecosystem is bankrupt.
Chaya Raichik (2700k followers), pseudonym Libs of TikTok, is a reactionary content mill that targets queer people. Raichik posted a list of five alleged transgender mass shooters and claimed “[t]he modern LGBTQ+ movement is radicalizing our youth into becoming violent extremists” (16k likes):
Raichik’s post has the same two flaws as Ngo’s:
No evidence of trend: Raichik offers no evidence that any of these shooters were radicalized by “the modern [queer] movement”.
Colorado Springs: Raichik also repeats the lie that the Colorado Springs shooter was transgender. Raichik knows this. She’s just lying to you, because the conservative intellectual ecosystem is bankrupt.
End Wokeness (2100k followers) is a white nationalist and favorite account of Elon Musk. EW claimed that this story would “disappear” because “the shooter was an online LGBTQ activist” (36k likes). After the story did not disappear, EW claimed that we “need to have a national conversation about the radicalization of LGBTQ youth” (15k likes).
Elon Musk is the world’s richest man. In response, Musk tweeted that “[t]his is happening a lot. Something is deeply wrong.”
Neither End Wokeness or Elon Musk provided any evidence that American queer youth are being “radicalized”, or that this shooter was “radicalized”. Was he?
Was the Perry High School shooter radicalized by the queer movement?
We can’t yet know for sure. However, no concrete evidence – such as a manifesto or social media post – currently suggests that the shooter had ideological motives for his shooting.
Instead, his classmates blamed bullying. According to two of his classmates who spoke to the AP, the shooter was relentlessly bullied since middle school:
Yesenia Roeder and Khamya Hall, both 17, said […] that the 17-year-old classmate who police identified as the shooter had been bullied relentlessly since elementary school. That escalated recently, they said, when his younger sister started getting picked on, too. Officials at the school didn’t intervene, they said, and that was “the last straw” for the shooter.
“He was hurting. He got tired. He got tired of the bullying. He got tired of the harassment,” Yesenia Roeder Hall, 17, said. “Was it a smart idea to shoot up the school? No. God, no.”
It’s possible that the shooter was bullied for being nonbinary. This is exactly what happened to the Highlands Ranch shooter, as I wrote last year:
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.
However, “being bullied by anti-queer bigots” and “being radicalized into supporting pro-queer terrorism” are actually quite different things.
When End Wokeness claims that the Perry High School shooter was a “LGBTQ activist”, that’s based entirely on them sharing pro-queer content on Instagram and Reddit.
If this is sufficient to make someone an “activist”, then the Colorado Springs shooter and the 2023 Allen Texas mall shooter – who was explicitly “inspired by Libs of TikTok” – were certainly certainly anti-LGBTQ activists:
However, you will never see reactionary accounts discuss the radicalization of fascist shooters. They claim their content could never inspire any mass violence by fascists – even when they call queer people “groomers” and pedophiles. They don’t give a shit about radicalization. They just hope that the shooter kills us, not them.
In short: No evidence suggests that the Perry High School shooter was radicalized into violence by gender ideology.
Are transgender people more likely to commit mass shootings?
Since 2018, the GVA has recorded 3355 mass shootings. Of those, 4 were conducted in whole or part by a transgender or nonbinary person (or 0.12%). This includes the Perry High School shooter. Here’s what that looks like in a graph:
In March 2023, the Gun Violence Archive estimated that 0.11% of all mass shootings since 2014 had been conducted by a known transgender suspect.
What about mass shootings with large death tolls? Since 2018, the GVA has recorded 176 mass shootings with 4 or more victims killed. Of those, 1 was conducted by a trans person (or 0.6%). 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.
I write blogs on socialist and progressive topics. To support my work:
Subscribe on Substack:
