We are repeatedly told that transgender-identifying individuals are not prone to commit gun violence. Major outlets — including The New York Times, Associated Press, CNN, and The Washington Post — publish articles arguing that transgender attacks are extremely rare and often accuse conservatives of exploiting such incidents for political purposes.
In the wake of recent attacks in Canada and Pawtucket, Rhode Island, public debate has again focused on transgender-identified perpetrators. Yet several major outlets did not mention that the Rhode Island shooter identified as transgender, nor did some report that the Canadian mass murderer was transgender. Other transgender-identifying individuals have also posed serious threats without firing a shot. One example is Nicholas Roske, who now identifies as transgender and attempted to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh before being stopped by authorities.
Despite this, the media continues to make basic statistical errors when claiming transgender-identifying people are not disproportionately violent. Transgender-identifying shooters commit mass public shootings and active shootings at rates far above their share of the population. In 2024, for instance, transgender-identifying individuals accounted for a share of active shooter attacks that was at least twelve times larger than their proportion of the general population.
Statistical Errors and Broad Definitions
Outlets ranging from PolitiFact to the Associated Press commit a key error by reporting only the transgender share of attacks without adjusting for the group’s very small share of the overall population. If a group makes up 1 percent of the population but commits 10 percent of attacks, that disparity cannot be dismissed simply because the group accounts for “only” 10 percent of incidents.
Publications such as the AP and Snopes also rely on overly broad definitions of shootings. They often include incidents that differ fundamentally from the types of attacks committed by transgender-identifying individuals. For example, the Gun Violence Archive classifies many gang-related shootings and robberies as “mass shootings.” While researchers may reasonably study those crimes, they differ sharply from cases in which an individual enters a public location with the explicit goal of killing as many people as possible to generate publicity.
Mass public shooters repeatedly state their desire to maximize casualties for attention. Gang members and robbers pursue entirely different motives. By lumping together gang violence with mass public shootings, analysts make attacks by transgender-identifying individuals appear rarer than they actually are. Researchers should compare transgender-identifying attackers only to perpetrators of similar types of attacks.
Accurate Analysis
The Federal Bureau of Investigation active shooting reports focus on shootings in public spaces and exclude gang disputes and robberies. Traditionally, the FBI defines a mass killing as four or more murders, a standard widely used in academic studies. Using that definition, data show clear overrepresentation.
From 2018 to 2023, estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Gallup, and the U.S. Census place the transgender share of the population at about 0.73 percent. A 2025 study by the Williams Institute estimates roughly 1 percent of individuals aged 13 and older identified as transgender in 2024 and 2025.
Because transgender-identifying shooters tend to be younger than average, age adjustments are relevant. Adjusting the 1 percent figure for those under age 36 yields approximately 0.76 percent.
Yet transgender-identifying individuals accounted for about 5 percent of mass public shootings from 2018 to 2025—roughly six times their share of the population. High-profile examples include the 2023 Nashville Covenant School shooter and the 2022 Club Q attacker, who identified as nonbinary and used “they/them” pronouns.
For active shooting cases in 2024, even using the 1 percent population estimate, transgender-identifying perpetrators accounted for a share of attacks about twelve times higher than their population share. Even excluding debatable cases, the disparity remains statistically significant.
