You’ve seen the charts. Maybe you saw a viral post on X or a heated segment on cable news where someone claimed a "disturbing trend" is emerging. The question of how many transgender mass shootings have occurred in the United States has become a massive flashpoint in the culture war. Honestly, it’s hard to get a straight answer when everyone seems to have an agenda.
But if we look at the raw data from the people who actually track this stuff for a living, the reality is a lot quieter than the internet would have you believe.
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The Actual Numbers: What the Data Shows
To get to the bottom of how many transgender mass shootings have happened, you have to look at the big databases. We're talking about the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) and The Violence Project. These are the gold standards for researchers.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks every incident where four or more people are shot (excluding the shooter), there were roughly 5,748 mass shootings between 2013 and late 2025.
Out of those nearly 6,000 incidents, the GVA confirmed exactly five involve transgender or nonbinary shooters.
That is less than 0.1%. Basically, it's a rounding error.
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If you use the stricter definition from The Violence Project—which only looks at "mass public shootings" where four or more people are killed in a public place—the number is even smaller. In their database of over 200 mass shooters dating back to 1966, only one is identified as a transgender man.
A Breakdown of the High-Profile Cases
People often cite a specific list of names when this topic comes up. Let's look at who they are. You've probably heard of the 2023 shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville. The shooter there, Aiden Hale, was a transgender man. This is the case that most often fuels the "trend" narrative because it was a school shooting with a clear manifesto involved.
Then there’s the 2022 shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs. The shooter's defense attorneys claimed their client was nonbinary. However, many advocates and prosecutors pointed out that this appeared to be a legal tactic to avoid hate crime charges, given the shooter's history of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
There was also an incident in 2019 at STEM School Highlands Ranch in Colorado where one of the two shooters was a transgender boy. More recently, in August 2025, an incident in Minneapolis involved a shooter who had previously identified as transgender.
When you add them up, you're looking at a handful of cases over decades.
Why the "Trend" Narrative is So Loud
If the numbers are so low, why does it feel like we're hearing about this every week?
Disinformation spreads fast. In 2024 and 2025, several mass shootings were immediately—and falsely—blamed on transgender people by high-profile social media accounts. For example, during the 2024 shooting at Lakewood Church, rumors flew that the shooter was trans. It wasn't true. Same thing happened with the Uvalde shooting in 2022; a Republican congressman even tweeted that the shooter was a "transsexual leftist," which was completely made up.
Experts like Laura Dugan, a professor of human security, have noted that the "threat" of transgender shooters is statistically non-existent. She’s gone on record saying it’s just not a concern for public safety compared to the overwhelming profile of mass shooters: cisgender men.
The Comparison Nobody Wants to Hear
If you really want to understand the "how many" part of this, you have to look at the other side of the coin.
- Cisgender Men: Responsible for about 98% of mass shootings.
- Transgender Individuals: Responsible for less than 0.1% to 0.5% (depending on the definition).
The U.S. Census and various studies estimate that about 0.5% to 1.6% of the American population identifies as transgender. This means that trans people are actually underrepresented in mass shooting statistics. They are committing these crimes at a lower rate than their share of the population.
The Reality of Violence and the Trans Community
Data from GLAAD and Sandy Hook Promise shows a very different kind of trend. Transgender people are far more likely to be on the receiving end of a gun than holding one.
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In fact, trans people are four times more likely to be victims of violent crime than cisgender people. For Black transgender women, the statistics are even grimmer; nearly 80% of homicides in that demographic involve a firearm.
When we talk about how many transgender mass shootings occur, we are focusing on a tiny sliver of the problem while ignoring the massive surge in hate-motivated violence directed at the LGBTQ+ community. Since 2022, there have been over 2,100 recorded anti-LGBTQ incidents in the U.S., many of them involving threats of mass violence against Pride events or clinics.
Moving Beyond the Talking Points
It's easy to get lost in the noise. But the facts aren't moving. Mass shootings are a systemic American crisis, and they are almost exclusively a "cisgender male" phenomenon.
Attributing these tragedies to gender identity isn't just factually wrong; it’s a distraction from the actual risk factors researchers have identified. The Violence Project found that 30% of mass shooters were suicidal before their attacks, and nearly all were in a noticeable state of crisis.
Instead of hunting for "trans shooters," experts suggest we should be looking at:
- Red Flag Laws: These allow families or police to temporarily remove guns from people in crisis.
- Safe Storage: Over 80% of school shooters stole their guns from family members.
- Crisis Intervention: Early mental health support for young men—who are the primary demographic for these crimes—is far more effective than profiling marginalized groups.
If you're looking for the truth about how many transgender mass shootings have happened, the answer is "very few." Five in twelve years, to be exact. Everything else you hear is usually just noise.
Actionable Next Steps:
To get a clearer picture of gun violence trends without the political spin, you should check out the Violence Project Database for long-term historical trends or the Gun Violence Archive for real-time, daily updates on incidents across the country. Comparing these datasets yourself is the best way to spot when a news story is being "massaged" for a specific narrative.