(The Daily Signal)—The man who opened fire at a Minneapolis Catholic school Wednesday, killing two and injuring 17 before taking his own life, drew renewed attention to the threat of transgender mass shooters.
He joins a surprisingly long list of violent offenders who identify or identified as transgender or non-binary, in the context of a broader movement that suggests such people live under a constant threat of death—from themselves and others. Many of them have explicitly targeted or shown hatred towards Christians.
None of this means most people who identify as transgender pose a violent threat, nor that activist groups like the Human Rights Campaign are intentionally inspiring people to commit violence.
However, the violent trend raises serious questions about the unintended consequences of transgender activists’ rhetoric.
The Transgender Offenders
Authorities have reportedly confirmed that the Minneapolis shooter, whom FBI Director Kash Patel identified as 23-year-old “Robin Westman, a male born as Robert Westman,” identified as transgender.
Westman joined the ignominious ranks of male-identifying Audrey Elizabeth Hale, 28, who shot and killed three children and three adults on March 27, 2023, at The Covenant School, a Presbyterian school in Nashville, Tennessee. Police fatally shot her during the attack.
On Sept. 20, 2018, 26-year-old Snochia Moseley shot and killed four people at a Rite Aid distribution center in Aberdeen, Maryland, before killing herself. A close friend of Moseley’s told The Washington Post the perpetrator identified as transgender.
On May 7, 2019, then-16-year-old Maya “Alec” McKinney and her 19-year-old fellow student, Devon Erickson, opened fire at STEM School Highlands Ranch in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, killing one and injuring eight. Both have been sentenced to life in prison. McKinney, a female, identifies as male.
On Jan. 4, 2024, 17-year-old Dylan Butler opened fire at his school, Perry High School in Perry, Iowa. He killed one student and the school’s principal, injured six more people, and shot himself. Butler does not appear to have identified as transgender, though his TikTok profile used “he/they” pronouns and he identified himself as “genderfluid” in one post.
In November 2023, a grand jury indicted 47-year-old Jason Lee Willie on 14 counts of threatening to injure people across state lines. Willie, a resident of Nashville, Illinois, allegedly threatened to rape girls in girls’ restrooms, carry out a mass shooting at schools, and bomb churches. Willie identifies as female and goes by the name “Alexia.”
(While 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich—the shooter who killed five and injured 25 at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub on Nov. 19, 2022—identified as nonbinary in court documents, critics have suggested that identity represented a false flag, an attempt to avoid federal hate crime charges. Aldrich currently faces life in prison but escaped the death penalty.)
Hatred Toward Christians
Many of these offenders targeted Christians or threatened them because of their faith.
The Daily Wire obtained notes written by Audrey Hale in which the shooter condemned her parents for trying to “force Christian friends” in her life. She wrote that “F—ing parents like them who think of themselves first and their preference of conservative religion-gay s— make them believe that the child they are given should” suffer.
Erickson, the STEM School Highlands Ranch shooter who teamed up with the transgender McKinney, had previously posted on Facebook, “You know what I hate? All these Christians who hate gays.”
Willie, the man indicted for threats, condemned black Christians as “trash,” calling them “transphobic” and “homophobic” and comparing them to “the f—ing white supremacists.”
In a video call to a church, he said, “But I promise you, [if] I catch your daughters in them bathrooms alone, I am gonna f— them,” he said. “I mean I am gonna f—ing f— them until they’re dead.”
Where Does This Come From?
Christians who believe the Bible cannot endorse same-sex relations or gender ideology, but mere disagreement does not explain or excuse this hatred.
On the contrary, the transgender movement itself encourages a victimization narrative that may play a role in radicalizing these people.
The Human Rights Campaign, the premier transgender activist group, has described the deaths of people identifying as transgender as an “epidemic.” However, homicides are actually more common among people who don’t identify as transgender—according to the Human Rights Campaign’s own data.
This claim represents the fountainhead of a constant stream of hyperbolic transgender rhetoric. For instance, MSNBC columnist Katelyn Burns described a move to restrict the Frankensteinian treatments of “gender-affirming care” as an act of genocide.
Supporters of “gender-affirming care” maintain—with a straight face—that people with gender dysphoria (the painful and persistent identification with the gender opposite one’s sex) cannot prevent themselves from committing suicide if they do not receive these interventions. Yet, at the Supreme Court, the lawyer arguing for “gender-affirming care” admitted there is “no evidence” these interventions reduce suicide.
Online influencers who identify as transgender have amassed huge followings, and members of their audiences may find themselves bombarded with hyperbolic rhetoric about the “hate” of those who dare to disagree with their preferred pronouns. In fact, the influential Southern Poverty Law Center repeatedly compares conservative Christians who disagree with gender ideology to the KKK.
If you legitimately believed that there is an “epidemic” of murder against people like you, that opposition to your agenda is a form of “genocide,” and that Christians’ disagreement with gender ideology is fueling this, you might be tempted to lash out.
The Post Millennial’s Andy Ngo has documented a growing movement on the Left that merges transgender with Antifa for the term “Trantifa.” Based on the idea that transgender people face constant threats, they arm themselves.
The Human Rights Campaign isn’t responsible for the heinous murders committed by Robert Westman or Audrey Hale, but its rhetoric arguably helps create the atmosphere in which such hatred grows.
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