Conservatives use Nashville shooting to declare war on trans community

The American right wing is delighted to use the recent shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, to declare war on the trans community, and it’s absolutely horrifying. There is so much to discuss here. To set the stage, it’s important to remember that the very people who now within hours of this shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, perpetrated by a trans person, the same people who will often say, “It’s too soon, we’re politicizing this, we need to let them bury their dead,” when people who have common sense about gun safety want to actually do something about the gun problem … they are now very much ready to politicize it. And to say that the problem in this country, the reason we have shootings, is the trans community, LGBT people, drag shows or whatever the case may be. 

And it’s difficult to even really know where to start. One of the things that’s important to remember is that mass shootings in the United States are so common, that very often media outlets don’t necessarily comment about every shooting. It’s like, oh, three people were killed in a shooting? Happens every day. Is it really a story? And, of course, the reality is, we just have to be honest about it. The vast majority of mass shooters in the US are white men under age 25. That’s the typical profile. 

It is different in Nashville, Tennessee. It was a trans person. And they never want to talk about the identity issue, except when it’s convenient for them. 2500 mass shootings, 5000 mass shootings and what, three or four have been non-binary or trans people, clearly no evidence that that is actually the problem. And then they go to their often used retorts, this isn’t about guns, it’s about mental health. Well, mental health may be a factor, I’m willing to concede that. So let’s better fund access to mental health treatment. Oh, no, they don’t want to do that. Wait, but didn’t you say mental health was the problem? Yeah, but we’re not going to fund it. Of course, now, they pathetically say the problem is drag shows as if a drag show had anything to do with this particular person showing up at this particular school. Sometimes they’ll say, Well, thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers for the victims and thoughts and prayers to prevent more shootings, or whatever the case may be, and it doesn’t work. So I’m willing to take an all of the above approach, but they don’t want to deal with the real issues, which are guns, and the toxic culture around guns in the United States. There are other countries that have plenty of guns. But there isn’t this gun culture, where guns are seen as a way to solve problems between people, or to solve societal problems. That’s a United States problem. The wide availability of guns is also a United States problem. I’ve laid out a 10 point plan that includes everything from mandatory waiting periods, mandatory 100%, background checks, even in private sales, limiting high capacity magazines to people over age 25, requiring liability insurance for every firearm that’s purchased. If you’re under 25, limiting the guns, you’re able to buy more generally limiting some of the guns and all of these things. And of course, all the gun people will say no, no, that stuff will never work. Well, we’ve never tried it. We know that nothing’s helping right now. And we’re doing nothing. It’s sort of like one of these. We’ve done nothing. And we’re all out of ideas. Well, here’s 10 ideas. And yeah, let’s do the mental health thing by actually funding it. Let’s deal with the gun culture part by trying to change the culture. But this is very clearly a case where we can tell their principles go in the toilet, as soon as they’re inconvenient. Normally, the principle is too soon, too soon to politicize, we can’t talk about it, and then they wait two months and nothing changes. And then it happens again, this time, only because of the identity of the shooter as a trans individual, they right away want to politicize it. And the really scary part is this will put trans people and LGBT people more broadly in danger. Tucker Carlson recently said that the trans movement is targeting Christians now they’re not. It is true, that there are people who hide behind their Christian beliefs to be rude, mean and violent to trans people. It is true that trans people are way more likely to be the victims of religiously oriented bigotry than they are to be the perpetrators of any kind of violence. That is true. And so we have to make sure that we understand what may be coming for our friends in the trans community and do everything we can to stop that Violence because it is a truly horrible thing.