Original article (in Slovenian) was published on 30/9/2024; Author: Žan Premrov
Last year’s mass shooting in Nashville was the first and only one carried out by a transgender person, according to The Violence Project.
On 6 September, Branko Grims, a member of the European Parliament for the Democratic Party (SDS), claimed on X that “in all the school shootings in the US in the last two years, the perpetrators have been ꞌtransgenderꞌ persons.”
On 9 September, Grims’ claim was shared by the Demokracija portal, which used it in the headline of its article.
Data on all shootings in US schools, regardless of the number of victims, is collected by the K-12 School Shooting Database. According to this database, as of the time of writing there had been 897 shootings in US schools since 2022. As the database’s creator, David Reidman, explained to Razkrinkavanje.si, only one school shooting has ever been carried out by a transgender person, in Nashville last year, when six people were killed.
Since more than four people were killed in the Nashville attack, but not the perpetrator, such a shooting qualifies as a mass shooting according to the definition used by the Congressional Research Service. Data on such shootings is collected by the Violence Project, a US non-profit research centre.
Since 2022, there have been three mass shootings at US schools, James Densley, one of the centre’s founders, told Razkrinkvanje.si. He confirmed that the Nashville mass shooting was the only one carried out by a transgender person.
According to the research centre, there have been almost 200 mass shootings in the US since 1966. In 97.6% of the cases, the perpetrator was a man, and in 2% a woman.
We have shared our findings with Demokracija and Grims. We will publish their responses when we receive them.
Grims’ claim that all school shootings in the US in the last two years have been committed by transgender people, which was subsequently quoted by Demokracija, is not true.
