In the wake of high-profile acts of gun violence, people are unfortunately quick to jump to conclusions. It’s disappointing to see people take advantage of that and turn such tragedies into political ammunition, using them to attack their political opponents. President Donald Trump, for example, rushed to blame “the radical left” for Charlie Kirk’s murder mere hours after his death, before a suspect had even been named. In the days after, rather than admitting the baselessness of that claim, the Trump administration removed a reputable peer-reviewed study from the Department of Justice’s website that showed right-wing extremists are responsible for the majority of deaths attributable to ideologically-motivated violence.
These kinds of baseless accusations become drastically worse when the accusers begin to target groups more specific than just the vague “radical left.” In particular, “transgender ideology” is often blamed for instances of gun violence. The Wall Street Journal reported that Charlie Kirk’s killer was motivated by “transgender ideology,” a statement they later had to retract, contributing to the idea that transgender people are somehow inherently violent. It took two whole days for Utah Governor Spencer Cox to clarify and correct this statement. Even then, Cox continued on to publicly suggest that Tyler Robinson, the perpetrator, was somehow “radicalized” by his transgender roommate. FBI Director Kash Patel, Fox News, Donald Trump Jr., Elon Musk, Steven Crowder, Rep. Nancy Mace and Laura Loomer all made similar claims in a desperate attempt to tie Robinson’s violent acts to some spectre of “transgenderism.”
This is not new. It happened in the wake of the shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church. It happened after the 2023 shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, when these kinds of anti-transgender conspiracy theories started gaining popularity in right-wing circles. Even when mass shooters have no connection whatsoever to transgender people, transgender bystanders still get blamed, such as in the 2022 Uvalde shooting. And out of all these bad actors, many of whom have repeatedly lied to the public in order to amplify transphobic rhetoric, almost none have been held accountable or have officially retracted their statements. In a media environment so saturated with this despicable rhetoric, an uninformed person could perhaps be forgiven for assuming transgender people are inherently violent.
But I want to be very clear about this. There is absolutely no credence to these claims. Over the past decade, the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive has recorded 5,300 mass shootings. In how many of those instances were transgender people perpetrators? Only four. The horrible actions of four individuals are apparently sufficient justification for many to label all transgender people as inherently violent.
There is no evidence to suggest that transgender people commit violence at higher rates than their cisgendered peers. In fact, transgender people are four times more likely to be victims of violent crime than cisgender people. Furthermore, mass shooters are disproportionately men. Do we suggest taking away guns from all men? Do we claim “male ideology” is the cause of America’s gun violence epidemic? No, of course not, because gender identity is not a cause of gun violence. The data actually shows that what most mass shooters have in common are traumatic childhoods, easy access to firearms and a lack of social support.
Clearly, though, Trump and his political allies don’t care about the real causes of gun violence, exemplified by the slashing of funding for gun violence prevention. Republicans, in general, downplay how easy access to firearms contributes to gun violence, and they are less likely to see gun violence as a problem. For many right-wing political figures, these tragedies are merely political ammunition for them to use in their perpetuation of a hateful agenda.
Under this warped worldview, it doesn’t matter who died, as long as Trump can use their death to try to ban transgender Americans from owning guns. Or as long as White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller can use gun violence to suggest that there’s a “domestic terror movement” tied to the Democratic Party and transgender people that needs to be aggressively dismantled. Or as long as the Heritage Foundation can use gun violence to propose that the FBI should label “transgender ideology” as a domestic terror threat.
The demonization and scapegoating of transgender people is a politically-savvy move for these unscrupulous politicians. It has allowed Trump to mobilize conservatives and drum up support for controversial uses of presidential power. In an article by The Trace, Ilan Meyer, a senior scholar at University of California, Los Angeles’ School of Law who has researched violence against transgender people, said, “‘The right’s scapegoating fits a historical pattern,” and that portraying a small, vulnerable community as a threat is a tactic that’s ‘as old as stigma itself.’”
To see the effect of this kind of rhetoric, you can look to the Human Rights Campaign. They report that, in 2023 and 2024 combined, over 1,000 bills discriminating against queer and transgender people were introduced across at least 14 state legislatures, and over 100 of those bills were passed into law. Predictably, violence against transgender people has become an epidemic, rising dramatically in recent years.
What’s happening here is far simpler than some would make it out to be: The Trump administration and his political allies are grossly distorting the public perception of these tragedies in order to foment hate against transgender people. They are seeking to label even criticism of violent, anti-transgender rhetoric, such as Conservative Political Action Conference speaker Michael J. Knowles’ call to “eradicate” transgenderism, as “nihilistic, violent extremism.” By now, it should be clear that “transgender ideology” is merely a dog whistle that signals a violent, hateful desire to deny transgender Americans the life, liberty and happiness that all people deserve.
Stuart Cremer, FCRH ‘26, is an English major from Mountain View, California.
