U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are — unsurprisingly — exploiting the recent school shooting in Minneapolis to target transgender people.
On America’s Newsroom Friday, Fox News host Dana Perino asked Johnson if “there has to be some sort of accountability on the transgender front.” The shooter, Robin Westman — who killed two children and injured at least 17 others at Annunciation Catholic School before dying by suicide — was reported to be transgender.
“I think so,” Johnson responded. “There’s a common denominator to so much of this, right? The last one of these school shootings … was another transgender.” He appeared to be referencing the 2023 Covenant School shooting in Nashville, though plenty of mass shootings since then have not involved trans people.
The reality is far different: mass shootings are overwhelmingly committed by men. Since 1966, 95 percent of perpetrators have been male, the Rockefeller Institute of Government reports — and nearly all of them 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.,” Michael Jensen, research director at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, told USA Today. Out of 1,000 “mass casualty” plots he’s tracked since 2023, fewer than five involved a transgender person.
Still, Johnson deflected blame away from guns, insisting mental health issues are the root cause — even though Republicans, including the Trump administration, have repeatedly cut funding for mental health services.
Kennedy, speaking on Fox & Friends Thursday, went further, claiming antidepressants and other medications used by trans people might be fueling shootings. “Many of them have black box warnings … so we can’t exclude those as a culprit,” he said.
But experts called that misleading. “SSRIs and antidepressants are safe and tested medications. They’re prescribed all over the world — and yet America is the only country with a mass shooting problem,” 314 Action’s Erik Polyak told The Daily Beast. He accused Kennedy of “doubling down on disinformation.”
Kennedy also wrongly claimed that mass shootings are a new phenomenon. Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith fired back 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.”
