This is Transgender Visibility Week, so I was bouncing around ideas this morning about what to post, but when I checked in on different internet communities where trans news abounds, things are squarely focused on how afraid people are from the backlash of the Nashville shooting that happened Monday.
I don’t think it’s an appropriate thing to focus on an individual shooter’s identity because no person goes out and shoots up a school who just isn’t simply sick in the head first and foremost. Our attention should be focused on the grieving parents, students, and communities who want tangible action against gun violence.
Three nine-year old children are dead: Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney. Three staff members are also dead: Katherine Koonce, 60, the head of The Covenant School; Mike Hill, 61, a custodian at the school; and Cynthia Peak, 61, a substitute teacher. You can read more about all the victims here.
This is devastating, but now it is getting disgusting as the Right wing, media, and all our usual suspects (MTG, Musk) have latched onto this shooting as an anti-trans Reichstag Fire.
Even before police officials in Tennessee identified the person responsible for murdering three children and three adults in the latest mass school shooting in the U.S., far-right extremists and transphobic people began spreading misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation focused on transgender people and not guns.
The shooter had access to two AR-style rifles, an AR-style handgun, and a handgun, but a Congresswoman is blaming the trans community for gun violence.
People who are trans are much more likely to be the victims of violent crime than the perpetrators.
It’s the guns. https://t.co/CH6YNGderH
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) March 27, 2023
Ingraham: We also don’t know the extent to which drug therapy of any sort also might have come into play here pic.twitter.com/YP4owJDhNk
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 28, 2023
Interesting how no one is talking about how the shooter is a “biological female” (eyeroll).
Some facts:
- According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 130 mass shootings this year, 647 in 2022. In total, they calculate 2,871 mass shootings in the U.S. since 2016. Some of those incidents involved multiple shooters.
- In that time, 3 of those shooters have been identified as transgender or nonbinary (I’m not counting the Club Q shooter since that has largely been debunked).
- That’s roughly 0.1% for those of you running the math in your head.
- Re: Hale. It’s quite unclear whether they are transgender or not, since there are conflicting reports from family and friends. Again, it’s not the damn point. Since the overwhelming percentage of mass shootings are carried out by white cis-men, it reeks that this shooter’s identity is the hot topic du jour.
Multiple members of my family lived in Newtown, CT during the Sandy Hook massacre, and I remember thinking at the time… this will stop, this has to stop. I fully expect that this tragedy will instead be used as a rallying flag for the right to gin up more anti-trans and christo-fascist nonsense, instead of actually doing something to protect children from guns.
— Human Rights Campaign (@HRC) March 27, 2023
Joyful Trans Visibility posts will be forthcoming later this week.
EDIT: Thanks @Matt_McIrvin and @SpaceUnit for pointing out my typos. I blame my terrible ADHD.
Devasting & Disgusting: The Nashville ShootingPost + Comments (97)