A widely cited February 2024 report by Politifact claimed: “No evidence of rising LGBTQ+ violent extremism or ‘trans terrorism.” A follow report by them in September 2025 that examined both the FBI’s definition of active shooting attacks and the notion of mass shootings concluded: “Are trans people ‘statistically’ more prone to commit gun violence? Data shows a different picture.” It looked at the period from 2018 to 2024 that we examine here. Unfortunately, these and similar claims make a basic error: they look only at the share of attacks committed by transgender individuals and fail to adjust for transgender individuals’ share of the population. That is an obvious statistical mistake. If a group makes up just 1 percent of the population but commits 10 percent of the attacks, no one would dismiss that disparity simply because the group accounts for “only” 10 percent of active shooting attacks.
Different estimates place transgender individuals at varying shares of the population, and researchers measure attacks in different ways (for example, distinguishing between active shooting attacks and mass public shootings). But regardless of how one breaks down the data, transgender individuals commit these attacks at disproportionately high rates. As we discuss below, in 2024 transgender individuals committed active shooting attacks at least 12 times their share of the population and possibly more than 16 times their share.
The FBI’s active shooting reports focus on shootings that occur in public and do not involve other crimes, such as drug gang fights or robberies. Traditionally, the FBI has classified a “mass” killing as the murder of four or more people, and academic studies have used a similar definition. We use that same definition (more details are available here). We have now looked at the numbers for both mass public shootings (active shootings involving four or more people murdered) and active shootings.
As we have pointed out before, transgender individuals are well over-represented in terms of mass public shootings. There are three estimates of the percentage of adults who are trans (CDC’s Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) finds 0.5% between 2017 to 2020, Gallup shows 0.7% in 2021, and the Census puts it at 1% in 2023). These numbers are clearly increasing over time, so an average for 2018 to 2023 years would probably overestimate the rate, but the average is 0.73%. Trans share of mass public shootings over the 2018 to 2025 period is 6.2 times their share of the population. The Nashville Catholic School shooter in 2023 and the Club Q murderer who identified as nonbinary and used the pronouns they and them in 2022 were transgender individuals.
However, we have now reviewed the FBI’s active shooting reports and identified which of those attacks involved transgender individuals. We conducted this analysis in two ways: first, by relying solely on the FBI’s data on active shooting cases; and second, by incorporating additional cases we compiled using the FBI’s definition of active shootings. Because this is a sensitive topic, the primary graphs we show here are based on the FBI data on active shooting cases.
The next graphs report the raw percentages of active shooting attacks committed by transgender individuals and by others, both for the entire 2018–2024 period and broken down by year. Across the full period, transgender individuals account for 2.5 percent of the total attacks, which may appear small at first glance. However, in 2024 their share rose sharply to 12 percent. Some may still describe that percentage as small, but in neither case do these raw figures adjust for transgender individuals’ share of the population.
Using only the FBI data over the entire period, transgender individuals commit active shooting attacks at 3.4 times their share of the population, and if you use the Census estimate that they make up one percent of the population, it is 2.5. Using the CPRC’s expanded dataset of active shooting cases, the estimate is reduced from 3.4 to 2.1 times their share of the population.
The graph at the top of the page shows a sharp increase in the transgender share of active shooting attacks in 2024, reaching more than 16.3 times their share of the population. Even if one assumes the highest estimate of transgender individuals from the Census, that they make up 1% of the population, their share of active shooting attacks in 2024 is 12 times their share of the population.
Again, most of the discussions about transgender individuals dismiss it as a serious concern because they only examine their attacks as a share of total attacks and don’t adjust for transgenders’ share of the population. But once one realizes that is the only way to properly analyze the data, regardless of how one measures it—whether using only FBI data or the expanded dataset—active shooting attacks committed by transgender individuals are becoming a serious problem.
Here are the graphs using the FBI data but assuming that one percent of the population is transgender.
We will include the Excel file for the data later.
Here is a list of trans shooters.
– Tumbler Ridge shooter was transgender, Jesse Van Rootselaar, nine murdered, 27 injured
– Annunciation Catholic Church shooter identified as transgender, Robin Westman, two murdered, 17 injured
– Nashville Christian shooter identified as transgender, Aiden Hale, six murdered
– Lakewood Church shooter identified as transgender, Genesse Ivonne Moreno, two injured.
– Colorado Springs nightclub shooter identified as non-binary, Anderson Lee Aldrich, five murdered
– Denver shooter identified as transgender, Alec McKinney (transgender) and Devon Erickson, one murdered, eight injured
– Aberdeen shooter identified as transgender, Snochia Moseley, three murdered, shooter also killed
– Iowa high school shooter transgender activist, Dylan Butler, two murdered, six injured
– Charlie Kirk’s assassin Tyler Robinson had a furry obsession and lived with transgender boyfriend
– Trump’s attempted assassin Thomas Crooks used they/them pronouns, had a deep interest in furries, and was exploring gender identity.
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