Speaker of the House Mike Johnson; Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
They are doing so even though the overwhelming majority of mass shooters are cisgender men.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are — predictably — using the school shooting in Minneapolis to attack transgender people.
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Johnson, appearing on America’s Newsroom on Fox News Friday, was asked by host Dana Perino if “there has to be some sort of accountability on the transgender front.” The shooter, Robin Westman, who killed two children and wounded 18 (some sources say 17) people at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis Wednesday, has been reported to be transgender. Westman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the scene.
“I think so,” answered Johnson, a Republican with a deeply anti-LGBTQ+ record. “I mean, there’s a common denominator to so much of this, right? The last one of these school shootings that we all saw and remember was another transgender.”
Related: Minneapolis mayor warns against ‘villainizing trans community’ after shooting leaves 2 children dead
He was apparently referring to the March 2023 shooting at Covenant School in Nashville. The shooter, Audrey Hale, who was killed by police at the site, was reported by some outlets to be trans. There have been other school shootings, not committed by trans people, since then.
In reality, the common denominator regarding mass shootings is that they are committed by men — 95 percent of the perpetrators in shootings tracked since 1966 were male, according to the Rockefeller Institute of Government. And the vast majority have been cisgender.
“I’m aware of no evidence to support the claim that transgender people are disproportionately responsible for mass violence events in the U.S., including shootings in schools,” Michael Jensen, research director at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, told USA Today. “In fact, the data suggests quite the opposite.”
In 1,000 “mass casualty” plots identified by Jensen since 2023, “you can count on less than one hand how many of those were perpetrated by a transgender individual,” he said.
Johnson went on to say that mental health issues, not availability of guns, are the primary contributor to mass shootings — but Republicans, including the Trump administration this year, have often cut funding for mental health services.
Kennedy, appearing on Fox & Friends Thursday, suggested antidepressants and other drugs taken by trans people are contributing to mass shootings. “Many of them have black box warnings that warn of suicidal ideation and homicidal ideation, so we can’t exclude those as a culprit,” he told host Brian Kilmeade.
However, these widely prescribed drugs are safe, and Kennedy is “doubling down on disinformation,” 314 Action Executive Director Erik Polyak told the Daily Beast. His group works to elect scientists to office.
“[Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors] and antidepressants are safe and tested medications. They are prescribed all over the world, but America is the only country with a mass shooting problem,” Polyak said.
Kennedy also falsely claimed that mass shootings are a recent phenomenon.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota likewise took Kennedy to task, posting on X, “I dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns don’t kill kids, antidepressants do. Just shut up. Stop peddling bullshit. You should be fired.”
