Trans Violence, School Shootings, and Social Contagion

Trans Violence, School Shootings, and Social Contagion

An overwhelming number of school shooters since the Covenant School Shooting in Nashville were experiencing gender dysphoria.

7 school shootings including yesterdays in Canada and starting with Hale in Nashville, and 4 are individuals experiencing gender dysphoria.

We should speak honestly about violence, identity distress, and the patterns we are seeing without demonizing a whole group of people.

There is no dispute that most people who identify as transgender are not violent and are not a threat to others. The point of this post is not to suggest otherwise.

The point is that in several of the most widely reported school and public mass shootings of the last few years, identity conflict, despair, suicidal ideation, and ideological framing appear in the writings, statements, or lives of the perpetrator.

And that deserves honest discussion rather than denial.

1. Why the numbers are so confusing

Different organizations use different definitions of “mass shooting,” which drives wildly different counts.

Some trackers include:

any incident where a gun is fired on school property, even if nobody is hurt

gang disputes that happen to occur near a school event

domestic violence spillover

Others focus on the rare events that the public is actually thinking about when they hear the words “school shooting,” meaning:

a deliberate attack on unrelated victims

in a school setting

with multiple victims

Those who massively inflate the numbers of “school shootings” are doing themselves no favors, because it becomes impossible to take the analysis seriously.

2. The high-profile school attacks since Covenant (2023)

Since the Covenant School shooting in Nashville (March 2023), the United States has had a small number of school attacks that became nationwide news and fit what most people mean by a mass shooting.

Here are the major ones.

Richmond, Virginia area (June 2023)

After a high school graduation event, five people were killed in a shooting tied to a long-running dispute.

This was horrific, but it was not a lone grievance driven school attack. It was closer to gang violence spilling into a school adjacent event.

Perry, Iowa (January 4, 2024)

A 17 year old named Dylan Butler shot multiple students and staff members before killing himself.

Elements of social contagion were present.

He posted images and cultural signals linked to Columbine, and his online footprint included identity confusion and despair.

Winder, Georgia (August 2024)

A 14 year old named Colt Gray killed four and injured nine at his school.

His father was criminally charged for buying him a rifle even after warnings and alarming statements.

This case reflects ignored warning signs, family failure, and access.

Madison, Wisconsin (December 16, 2024)

A 15 year old named Natalie Lynn Rupnow killed two and injured six before dying by suicide.

Her writings and imagery reflected admiration for previous school shooters.

One detail that matters here is not “music causes murder.” It does not.

But Rupnow and Dylan Butler shared an unusually specific cultural marker: both were fans of KMFDM, a niche industrial band.

That is not evidence that KMFDM turns people into killers.

It is evidence of something else: both shooters were pulling from the same aesthetic and influence stream that has shaped school shooter imitation for decades, beginning with Columbine.

Minneapolis, Minnesota (August 27, 2025)

A shooter opened fire during a school Mass at Annunciation Catholic School.

Two children were killed and 18 other children and 3 adults were injured. With that many children injured by a rifle, the quick response and trauma care given (in contrast to an incident like Uvalde) saved many lives.

Reporting identified the perpetrator as Robin M. Westman.

Writings and evidence released afterward reflected both shooter admiration and profound identity distress.

Now yesterday, in a small town called Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, Canada (February 10, 2026)

A deadly school attack occurred at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School and a nearby residence. 10 dead including the shooter and 27 injured.

It is being described as one of the deadliest school attacks in Canadian history.

Authorities have not publicly confirmed every detail circulating online, but early reporting is already linking the suspect to gender identity distress and online postings. 18 year old Jesse Strang has been identified in the press as the trans shooter. How deeply tragic to see the talisman of the pride poster "Everyone is Welcome Here" on the exit where people are fleeing for their lives (see comments).

3. The pattern people are pretending not to see

Even if you believe this is statistically rare, something is still obvious.

A shockingly high percentage of the most widely publicized school attacks in the last few years involve:

suicidal ideation

identity distress

admiration for previous shooters

and online subcultures that treat mass murder as a kind of legacy

"Trans people make up 5 percent of the population and less than 1 percent of attackers so they are less likely to attack than everyone else" looks way different than this stark reality. That is not a reason to demonize a whole minority group.

It is a reason to stop lying.

4. The Let Them Fly Barn

Imagine a society where adults started telling hurting young people something obviously false.

They tell them, with a straight face, that they can fly.

Not metaphorically.

Literally.

They say, “If you will just flap your arms hard enough, and believe hard enough, and jump from the right place, you will finally become what you were meant to be.”

Then they build a business around it.

They buy a beautiful piece of property on a cliff. They build a platform. They put up signs. They charge admission. They sell shirts.

They hire counselors whose job is not to ask, “Is this true?”

Their job is to say, “You are brave. You are valid. Anyone who questions this is harming you.”

Some kids stand there shaking.

Some are suicidal.

Some are angry.

Some are desperate.

And they jump.

They fall.

They shatter.

And then the same adults who lied to them say, “The reason you are in pain is because people down below did not clap loud enough. If they had affirmed you more, you would have flown.”

That is not compassion.

That is cruelty.

That is what it looks like when a culture turns delusion into a moral virtue, then blames reality for the injuries.

The Christian response is not to mock the broken.

The Christian response is to patch up the wounded, and to confront the liars.

5. Responsibility matters

When a parent sees warning signs of a future school shooter and buys their child a rifle anyway, they should be charged.

When a parent, school counselor, psychiatrist, or doctor promises someone that a profound and in some cases irreversible change will make their life whole, and it does not, they are also contributing to the problem.

Not in the same way.

But in the same moral category: people with authority making promises to fragile people that reality cannot keep.

6. Social contagion is real

People should be paying more attention to social contagion.

I do not know if every future school shooter will leave a trail on Reddit, or 4chan, or darker corners of the internet.

But I shudder to think how many message boards have thousands of people who are far closer than any of us want to admit to moving from “shocking” online talk to real evil in the real world.

Spaces where people say racist things are harmful.

Spaces where people romanticize school shooters are far worse.

They create a shared script.

They normalize the idea.

They give lonely, angry, suicidal people a model and a community to impress.

Canada learned this long before the internet.

In 1989, Marc Lepine murdered 14 women at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal and then killed himself.

In his suicide letter, he expressed admiration for Denis Lortie, the Canadian Armed Forces corporal who attacked Quebec’s National Assembly in 1984, killing three and wounding thirteen.

That is what social contagion looks like in the pre-digital era.

One violent man becomes the reference point for another.

Now add modern platforms and algorithmic amplification, and the contagion effect becomes easier, faster, and more scalable.

7. The gasoline and the match

Here is how I think about it.

Suicidality is the gasoline.

In the United States, the CDC reports over 49,000 people died by suicide in 2023, and the CDC also reports 1.5 million suicide attempts that year.

Many of us have lost people we love to this battle.

Those numbers are staggering, and they include people with different levels of intent, including people who are ambivalent and crying out for help.

The match is grievance and permission.

A suicidal person told that the reason for their misery is somebody else’s wickedness, and that violence will finally make them seen, can move from despair inward to rage outward.

8. The “transition or suicide” claim is not true

For years we have been told that it is vital to support gender transitions or else the person will kill themselves.

But the best evidence does not support the claim that transition reliably resolves suicidality long term.

Even in studies most favorable to gender affirming care, post transition people still show depression and suicidality far above the general population baseline.

They deserve compassion and many of them are tragic victims of a medical industrial complex that responded to financial incentives that ruined the lives of children. It also means the slogan is false.

And when you build an identity movement around fragile self concepts, then tell people the world is committing violence against them by refusing to affirm the lie, you should not be shocked when a tiny fraction of unstable, suicidal people turn that despair outward.

9. The most high profile assassination in my lifetime (surpassing John Lennon) was the murder of Charlie Kirk. He was killed by someone who absolutely was tied into social contagion, and who joked about violence towards those who disagreed with acceptance and embrace of his lovers trans identity online. So yes, it is another important cultural marker, and people denying it have just added another layer to their denial of realities the rest of us can clearly see. Creating a world where people who refuse to agree with your delusion are harmful to you is incredibly dangerous, because it fuels the idea that violence against those who do not support you is self defense and that those who refuse to embrace your chosen gender identity or that of those you love represent an existential threat. That is a shockingly common lie in many circles.

10. A final word to Christians

We must balance kindness, compassion, and love with the command to speak truth in love.

Agreeing with lies is never kind.

It is cruelty.

Embracing mental illness and redefining it does not help the person struggling.

It sets them up for deeper despair.

The Christian response is:

compassion for the sufferer

truth about what God made

and courage to confront the people profiting from misery

I do not want to demonize anyone.

I want to help the demonized.

And I want us to stop pretending that this pattern is not real.