Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, which works to advance LGBTQ equality within the Home, on Tuesday slammed “idiots” who claimed with out proof that the shooter at a Wisconsin personal faculty a day earlier was transgender.
Two folks — one teenage scholar and a trainer — have been killed and one other six have been injured, together with two college students in essential situation with life-threatening accidents, in a capturing Monday at Ample Life Christian Faculty in Madison, Wis. Native authorities recognized the shooter as 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, who glided by the identify “Samantha” and was a scholar there. No proof suggests Rupnow recognized as trans.
“To all the idiots who claimed the shooter was trans with no information whatsoever to believe that, f‑‑‑ off. Your ignorance speaks volumes. Your hate is consuming your brains (or what’s left of them),” Pocan wrote early Tuesday on the social platform X, responding to a submit by former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) that requested “What about trans control instead?” after President Biden’s demand for harder gun legal guidelines.
At a information convention Monday, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes stated the division doesn’t understand how Rupnow recognized and burdened that folks ought to method web rumors about her gender with warning.
“I don’t know whether Natalie was transgender or not. And quite frankly, I don’t think that’s important at all,” Barnes stated. “I don’t think whatever happened today has anything to do with how she or he or they may want to identify.”
Far-right social media personalities and conservative provocateurs in recent times have been fast to say, typically with out proof, that transgender folks have been behind among the nation’s most devastating acts of violence. Perpetrators of mass shootings at a Texas elementary faculty, movie star pastor Joel Osteen’s megachurch and a highschool in suburban Iowa have been all baselessly recognized as trans.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) on social media blamed the 2023 capturing that killed 19 kids and two adults at Robb Elementary Faculty in Uvalde, Texas, on a “transsexual leftist illegal alien.” He later deleted the submit.
“Per capita is there a more violent group of people anywhere in the world than radicalized trans activists???” Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X after a 17-year-old opened hearth at Perry Excessive Faculty in central Iowa. He shared a submit from the account Libs of TikTok, whose posts ceaselessly goal LGBTQ folks and who earlier that day claimed the shooter was “a trans genderfluid te*ror*st.”
That shooter’s gender id continues to be unknown. Screenshots of his social media accounts present some LGBTQ-related content material, together with a picture of graffiti that claims, “LOVE YOUR TRANS KIDS.”
Libs of TikTok additionally falsely claimed that Genesse Moreno, who injured two folks in a capturing at Osteen’s Lakewood Church final 12 months, was transgender. Moreno recognized as feminine regardless of utilizing a number of aliases, together with the identify Jeffrey Escalante, Houston police stated.
Conservative figures together with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Elon Musk declare gender-affirming hormone remedy, significantly doses of testosterone prescribed to transgender males, is among the driving forces behind an alleged rise in transgender shooters. However mass casualty shootings perpetrated by somebody who’s transgender or nonbinary are exceedingly uncommon, and people teams are way more prone to be the victims of violence.
Transgender or nonbinary gunmen are answerable for 4 broadly cited mass shootings since 2019, accounting for lower than 1 p.c of mass capturing incidents over the previous six years, in keeping with a tally from Everytown for Gun Security, a company that advocates for stricter gun legal guidelines.
Most shooters are cisgender males, in keeping with the Violence Mission, which researches mass shootings.
