Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

No doubt it's Freedom For Me Not For You from too many of the religious crowd:

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Related: The Far-Right Christian Quest for Power: ‘We Are Seeing Them Emboldened’
"Fox News Runs Wild With Two Very Dumb Easter Outrages
‘MORE STUPIDITY’
“We have to put Christ back into Easter,” one Fox News star fumed during one of
the conservative cable giant’s many faux-outrage segments around the holiday."
[...]
Mr. Mastriano’s ascension in Pennsylvania is perhaps the most prominent example of right-wing candidates for public office who explicitly aim to promote Christian power in America. The religious right has long supported conservative causes, but this current wave seeks more: a nation that actively prioritizes their particular set of Christian beliefs and far-right views and that more openly embraces Christianity as a bedrock identity.

Many dismiss the historic American principle of the separation of church and state. They say they do not advocate a theocracy, but argue for a foundational role for their faith in government. Their rise coincides with significant backing among like-minded grass-roots supporters, especially as some voters and politicians blend their Christian faith with election fraud conspiracy theories, QAnon ideology, gun rights and lingering anger over Covid-related restrictions.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174163546
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"Vance Boelter was also an outspoken evangelical Christian who traveled to Africa to tell his faith story and, in at least one sermon, pointedly questioned American morals on sexual orientation, according to videos and social media posts reviewed by CNN."

Are trans people ‘statistically’ more prone to commit gun violence? Data shows a different picture

By Loreben Tuquero September 9, 2025

If Your Time is short

* Research shows that the majority of mass shootings are perpetrated by men who are not transgender.

* It is difficult to come up with an exact figure for the percentage of mass shootings committed by trans people, because there is no widely accepted definition of "mass shooting" and it is sometimes not possible to verify a shooter’s gender identity.

* Experts said there is no data showing trans people are more prone to violence or to committing mass shootings. Transgender people are more likely to be victims of violence than others.

[...]

As families comforted their children and police pieced together what caused a shooter to open fire on an Annunciation Catholic School Mass in Minneapolis, some Republican pundits and policy leaders repeated a familiar talking point about transgender people.

"This should never have happened," Fox News host Jesse Watters said Aug. 27, hours after 23-year-old Robin Westman’s attack killed two children and injured 21 other people. "But how did it?"

Watters highlighted Westman’s identity to say it’s part of a "pattern" of violence perpetrated by transgender people. In 2020, a judge granted Westman’s name change request — from Robert Westman to Robin Westman — in a court document that said Westman "identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification."

"Statistically, the trans population has been prone to violence," Watters said, a comment viewed more than 3.7 million times on X when it was shared by conservative commentator Benny Johnson. "That’s not villainizing, that’s reality."

Four days later on CNN’s "State of the Union," White House Senior Director for Counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka made similar remarks: "In just a couple of years, we have seen seven mass shootings involving people of transgender nature or who are confused in their gender. Seven in just the last couple of years. That is inordinately high."

We’ve reviewed similar statements about transgender people committing violence. Crime and terrorism experts still agree: There is no evidence that transgender people are more likely to commit gun violence than others.

That’s partly because of the way "mass shooting" is defined and tracked and partly because the data that is collected overwhelmingly shows that the majority of shootings are perpetrated by men who are not transgender.

The Violence Prevention Project at Hamline University studied mass shootings that it defined as shootings in public places that resulted in four fatalities excluding the shooter. Its analysis found that males were the perpetrators in 98% of the shootings, female shooters accounted for 2% of the attacks and transgender people accounted for less than 1%. (The Minneapolis incident would not qualify as a mass shooting under Hamline’s definition.)

When PolitiFact asked Fox News for Watters’ evidence, a spokesperson cited shooting incidents. Gorka posted a list of six incidents on X. Out of nine cases Fox News and Gorka cited going back to 2018, four involved shooters who identified as transgender, a PolitiFact review of news reports, investigations and court records found. One was nonbinary, which means they did not see themselves as exclusively male or female; in the other cases, the perpetrator’s gender identity was not as clear as Watters and Gorka framed.

Two incidents did not qualify as a mass shooting by any definition — one because it was not a shooting, and the other because the gunfire resulted in one injury, no fatalities.

The number of mass shootings in the U.S. since 2018 ranges from the tens to the thousands, depending on the data and criteria used to measure them. The most expansive definition comes from Gun Violence Archive, a nationally recognized source for gun violence data, which counts any incident in which four or more people are shot or killed, excluding the shooter — the only definition under which the Minneapolis incident would qualify.

If all seven shooting incident attackers included in Gorka and Fox News’ lists were counted, that would be seven out of 4,147 mass shootings from 2018 to 2025, based on Gun Violence Archive data — a rate of 0.17% as of Sept. 4.

"I think (it) is reasonable to assert that, anecdotally, there have been several high profile mass shootings committed by transgender individuals in recent years, and whether that is an aberration or a new trend has not yet been confirmed statistically," said Adam Lankford, University of Alabama Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice professor and chair.

Speaking outside the school shortly after the incident, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, cautioned against blaming the trans community.

Anybody "using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity," Frey said during a press briefing outside the Annunciation school and church.

Watters and Gorka cited cases that don’t neatly fit the description of trans mass shootings

https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/sep/09/trans-people-mass-shootings-gun-violence/