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In the early hours of February 11, 2024, a 36-year-old woman entered the Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas (USA) with an AR-15-style assault rifle. We won't mention her name in this article since we believe no shooter should be publicized as this could lead to others looking for infamy as well.
The Lakewood Church is run by celebrity, Joel Osteen who has been famous for profiting off of religion and hiding hundreds of thousands of dollars in the walls of his house.
According to the local police, they say the woman entered the church and started shooting. Two off-duty officers who were working security at the megachurch returned fire and killed the suspect.
Reports later surfaced that the woman brought her 7-year-old son with her into the church and the son was also shot in the head. He is still in critical condition at this time (February 14, 2024) but the police have not identified who shot the young boy.
A parishioner at the church, a 50-year-old man was also wounded.
During the press conference held by the Houston Police Department, authorities said the suspect had a history of mental illness, specifically schizophrenia which causes a person severe delusions and hear voices that are not there. It is also common for them to name these voices with different names to keep their thoughts organized.
For this shooter, she named those voices multiple names, some of which were female names and one that was a male name.
This is where the classified hate group known as Libs of TikTok ran away with the story and labeled the shooter as transgender. This was a clear effort to make the trans community seem dangerous but there's no evidence of such claims. The woman who committed this violent act in Houston was schizophrenic, a mental illness. She was not transgender, something that is obviously different besides the fact that being trans is not a mental illness in any way.
The hate group Libs of TikTok is on a long campaign to make LGBTQ people out to be terrorists. The leader of the hate group keeps repeating the statement online that the following mass shootings were committed by LGBTQ people. Some of them you'll immediately notice make no sense.
"Colorado Springs shooter: nonbinary
Nashville school shooter: trans
Aberdeen shooter: trans
Denver school shooter: trans
Iowa school shooter: trans/genderfluid
Lakewood Church shooter: trans"
This was followed by the statement the hate group made, "The modern LGBTQ+ movement is radicalizing our youth into becoming violent extremists."
Aside from the fact that LGBTQ is not a "movement" but rather a community, let's look at these cases and see if they were all actually LGBTQ:
Colorado Springs: The shooter in this case entered a notoriously gay bar called Club Q and murdered 5 LGBTQ people. It was later found to be a hate crime committed by an extreme homophobe who found most of his information online about the LGBTQ from hate groups like Libs of TikTok and Daily Wire. Both of those outlets later celebrated the mass shooting on their platforms.
Later, during the trial, his defense lawyers said their client identified as non-binary; however, it is widely speculated online that the shooter was not planning on outliving the event since most shooters get taken down by police during their mass shooting. It is worth noting that the FBI just announced they are looking at charging the man with a hate crime because it was committed against the LGBTQ community. Then, suddenly, his lawyers said he identified as a member of the community. Side note, it's much more difficult to charge someone with a hate crime against their own community. So, this was clearly not a member of the LGBTQ who committed the crime. He was likely only posing as a member just to save himself some charges during the trial.
Nashville School: In March 2023, a woman killed 6 people in a Nashville, Tennessee (USA) elementary school. Police were quick to tell reporters that the shooter was assigned female at birth and was identifying as a woman, meaning she was never transgender. Police did find a website that she wrote under a male pen name but to say she was trans would be completely false.
Aberdeen: In September of 2018, a woman killed four people outside a Rite Aid in Aberdeen, Maryland (USA). She was confirmed to be transgender but it was also later confirmed that the reason she committed the crime in the first place was because of her struggles with society accepting her for being trans.
Denver School: In May of 2019, a 17-year-old boy murdered one other student and wounded eight others. That shooter was assigned female at birth and later identified to his classmates as male. He received immense bullying for being trans and later said in court that he only planned his act of violence against his bullies because the school, and specifically those five classmates, were so transphobic.
Iowa School: In January 2024, a man entered an Iowa school and murdered one person. The gender identity of the shooter is still unknown in February 2024 at the time of writing this piece. But that didn't stop hate groups from calling the shooter trans when in fact, not even the police think that he is trans at this time.
Lakewood Church: As we explained above, she was a cis-gender female who wanted revenge on her husband inside the church. She was schizophrenic but she never identified as trans and the police have no reason to suspect she is trans either.
So, there is no epidemic of trans people becoming terrorists. It's just another lie put on by hate groups to fool the public into enacting laws to take us back to the 1800s. If you want proof, just look at the numbers.
According to Reuters, they examined the 4,400 mass shootings committed in the United States in the past 10 years. Out of the 4,400 mass shootings, only 10 of those shooters were transgender. That comes out to just 0.11% of all mass shootings since 2014. This is compared to 96% of all mass shootings being committed by cis-gender males and the remaining 3.89% were committed by cis-gender females.
Those facts didn't stop hate groups from spreading this lie of transgender people being violent. Even Donald Trump, Jr. spread this hate group's post and added his own comment: "Per capita violent trans extremists have to have become the most violent group of people anywhere in the world..." But there are mountains of evidence to prove that statement is false.
So, why say it? Well, it gets far-right Republicans to fear the trans community more and if they can make you afraid of some issue, then you want there to be a solution to that issue so you can stop fearing it. For conservatives, they want laws banning trans people from existing and they've proposed 417 bills to state legislators so far in 2024 to erase trans people.
In summary, no - trans people are not violent and for the most part, do not commit these acts of violence. But making people fear trans people distracts their audience from the real issues so they can keep selling guns, which manufacturers can profit from, and those profits get funneled into campaign fundraisers for conservatives. Gee, it's almost like they want to distract you so they can fill their own pockets with money, meanwhile, innocent children across the country are being murdered because they won't act.
