Between 2013 and 2025, 5,748 mass shooters terrorized schools, churches, and public spaces killing hundreds dead and shattering thousands of lives. One of the 5,748 assailants was transgender. Robin Westman, who attacked children at Assumption Church in Minneapolis in 2025, represents the 0.1% of mass shooters who are transgender, which was enough to trigger an avalanche of transphobia and hysteria over sexual identities that we barely understand (Gun Violence Archive, 2025).
Robin Westman and Transgender people are convenient scapegoats for a society that cannot bring itself to acknowledge that there is something terribly destructive and sadistic about how it conceptualizes masculinity and masculine resilience to adversity. Consider the statistics (Silvia-Giovannini, 2024): 96% of mass shooters are male, 97% of mass shooters are heterosexual, 58% of mass shooters have a criminal record, 50% of mass shooters are White, and 36% of mass shooters are between the ages of 21 and 30.
Westman’s tragic actions provide a spectacle, fodder for a sensational Hollywood movie, but it moves Americans no closer to understanding why young White males reach for their guns in times of crisis, anger, and despair.
Some newspapers suggested Westman’s actions were caused by her sexual identity. The New York Post shared passages Westman wrote in her diary, including statements that she regretted being trans and wanted so much to be a cig-gender girl. She lamented that full transition to female was too costly. Westman’s lament pointed to the reality that Transgender people are not given the same respect and compassion as cis-gender people. That Westman struggled with self-hate was underscored by homophobic messaging she left behind.
Transgender people represent the latest chapter in the saga of America’s obsession with and anxiety about sexuality. Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior of the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior of the Human Female (1953) documented the frequency of extra-marital affairs, bestiality, masturbation, and homosexual liaisons, which horrified and titillated Americans who assumed that very few behaved outside the wholesome norms of heterosexual coupling. Americans struggle with the science of sexuality and often view the subject only through a moralistic lens, which has a logic all its own. It posits that what might be natural in the world can also be sinful and immoral, and that any scientific effort to normalize “deviant” behavior merely contributes to mental illness. The logic also concludes that Westman attacked others because she was sexually pathological and not because she could not find a pathway to self-acceptance and reliance in the face of society’s cruel judgment.
Lots of young heterosexual males who shoot people have identity crises. However, as long as their crisis does not involve the way they experience their gender or their orientation, public criticism will bend mercifully toward compassion if the poor lad found it difficult to be a man where men have been repressed by political correctness. The outrage toward militant masculinity and the pride we have in solving problems with violence fades once we are assured that the shooter was merely troubled and not a “deviant.” The logic allows us to continue our gun sales, log endless hours playing video games, and believe that we live according to values and beliefs that will bring us to wholeness, peace, and the love of God.
References
Gun Violence Archive 10-Yer Review. Gun violence Archive, Washington, D.C. 2025. Gun Violence Archive
Silvia-Giovannini, Megan. “Mass Shooting in the United States: Victim and Offender Profiles.” University of Las Vegas, Center for Crime and Justice Policy. December 2024. Mass Shooting in the United States: Victim and Offender Profiles
