After a shooter opened fire in an Iowa high school on Thursday, some on social media have claimed that the perpetrator, Dylan Butler, was transgender.
One sixth-grade student was killed in the incident, which took place at around 7:30 a.m. local time, before classes had even begun at Perry High School, Iowa. A further three students and one school administrator were injured. The shooter, 17-year-old Butler, was found dead at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The gender identity of Butler has not yet been established, but some right-wing figures have taken to social media to say that Butler identified as transgender, although no solid evidence can prove the claim, as well as that transgender people are more likely to commit acts of violence. It adds to a number of incidents in which similar claims have spread quickly across the internet.
Right-wing blogger Ian Miles Cheong posted on X, formerly Twitter, that Butler had posted on trans Reddit forums under the username “Dylanpickle1996.”
Other right-wing activists and pundits have weighed in on the incident. Donald Trump Jr. posted on X: “Per capita is there a more violent group of people anywhere in the world than radicalized trans activists??? Given the tiny fraction of the population that they make up it doesn’t seem like anyone else even comes close.” He did not supply evidence to back up his claim.
GETTY
The anti-LGBTQ+ Libs of TikTok social media account posted on X the supposed identification of the shooter, claiming they were gender fluid. The account posted a screengrab of a TikTok post that was allegedly reposted by Butler. The image shows red graffiti writing that reads: “Love your trans kids.”
The account published the images with the caption: “This is the trans genderfluid te*ror*st who shot up a school in Iowa today. Trans extremists are a serious threat. The media will bury this.”
Another user, Collin Rugg, posted screenshots from social media accounts allegedly linked to Butler. In an image of the perpetrators supposed Instagram account, the pronouns are listed as “he/they.” In another TikTok account that Rugg says belongs to Butler, the hashtag “#genderfluid” is used.
Newsweek has been unable to independently verify any of the claims.
Per capita is there a more violent group of people anywhere in the world than radicalized trans activists🏳️‍⚧️???
Given the tiny fraction of the population that they make up it doesn’t seem like anyone else even comes close. https://t.co/3kT7x1NEZ3
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 5, 2024
Are Transgender Shootings On The Rise?
Evidence over whether shootings perpetrated by transgender people are on the rise is disputed. While right-wing figures like Donald Trump Jr. have claimed such crimes are increasing, experts have told Newsweek that this isn’t necessarily the case, though the picture is complex.
Transgender individuals account for about 0.6 percent of the U.S. population—some 1.6 million over the age of 13, according to data covering 2017-2020 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was cited in a study published last summer by researchers at the Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA’s Law School. A June 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center in June 2022 also reported a figure of 0.6 percent of all U.S. adults.
According to The Violence Project, which maintains a comprehensive national database of mass public shootings, men make up 97 percent of mass public shooters.
The project specifically focuses on mass shootings in public settings where four or more individuals were killed, with the exception of the shooter. Considering that transgender people constitute 0.6 percent of the population, it is expected that they would be involved in approximately one incident in the database, an analysis by Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler reported in March 2023.
By the Gun Violence Archive’s criteria—a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter—transgender people would be expected to have committed at least 16 mass shootings since 2018, higher than the number of confirmed incidents.
Jaclyn Schildkraut, the executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the Rockefeller Institute of Government, previously told Newsweek that mass shootings by individuals identifying as transgender are “exceedingly rare.”
Because “the base rate of incidents in general is so small, any increase looks astronomical,” Schildkraut said. “So going from 1 shooting perpetrated by a transgender individual to 2 is a 100 percent increase… it is important to remember that correlation (which this is not even large enough to be that) does not equal causation.”
Trump Jr. also made the same claim of a rise in transgender shootings in March 2023 following the killing of six people at a school in Nashville, Tennessee. Audrey Hale was identified as transgender by police in the hours following the shooting.
Other shootings in recent years have varying evidence that the person responsible was transgender or other non-conforming gender identity. In November 2022, non-binary shooter Anderson Lee Aldrich killed five people at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs. According to Reuters, lawyers confirmed their identity as non-binary.
In May 2019, Alec McKinney, a transgender teenager, killed one student and injured eight others in a shooting on a classroom at STEM School Highlands Ranch, south of Denver. Another shooting in Aberdeen, Maryland, committed by Snochia Moseley, killed three people in September 2018. Moseley was transgender, according to reports at the time, but Newsweek has been unable to verify this information.
