Shootings by transgender individuals raise concern over convergence of mental illness, medication, and radicalization.
A combination of ideology, social media, mental health disorders, and medication may be influencing recent trends in violence and radicalization among those who identify as transgender, according to experts.
“My general feeling is that we’re seeing more of it … not for any one factor, but because of several factors all convening, and they’re all amplified by the political rhetoric,” said C. Alan Hopewell, a Fort Worth neuropsychologist.
When people struggling with their sexual identity are prescribed hormones to change their bodies, it impacts the way they think, he told The Epoch Times.
Hopewell said that combining hormones, medication, and intense online pressure can create a dangerous situation.
Since 2018, there have been at least six high-profile shootings at schools and businesses involving individuals who identified as transgender or were described as gender-confused.
Two were mass shootings, which are defined by the Crime Prevention Research Center as the killing of four or more people in a single incident that’s not gang-related or related to some other crime.
Last year, Anderson Lee Aldrich, a man who identifies as nonbinary, was sentenced to 55 concurrent life sentences for the 2022 shooting of five people at an LGBT nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
In 2023, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, a woman who identified as a man, opened fire at the Covenant School in Nashville. Three 9-year-olds and three adults were gunned down before police shot and killed Hale.
Robert Westman, who changed his name to Robin, killed two children and wounded 21 others before killing himself at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis this August. The 23-year-old left a manifesto saying he “was tired of being trans” and scrawled anti-Christian messages and the words “kill Donald Trump” on weapons.
Likewise, members of the Zizians, described as a cult-like group largely made up of transgender individuals, have been mentioned in connection with the death of a woman during an attack on a California landlord in November 2022, the landlord’s subsequent killing, and the deaths of a Pennsylvania couple.
Most recently, the Zizians have been linked to a highway shootout in Vermont that left a U.S. Border Patrol agent dead.
In Texas, Cameron Arnold, also known as Autumn Hill, and Bradford Morris, also known as Meagan Morris, were charged with the attempted murder of federal agents in connection with an ambush of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer at the Prairieland ICE detention facility in July.
