Accidental verifications

From How Many Mass Shootings Have Been Carried Out by Transgender People? by Aleks Phillips in Newsweek.

Phillips notes:

A tweet listing four mass shootings in the past five years that were perpetrated by transgender people has gone viral, attracting 5.4 million views as of 8 a.m. ET on Tuesday and the attention of Twitter's owner, Elon Musk.

Benny Johnson, a political columnist and Turning Point U.S.A. official, wrote in his viral tweet: "One thing is VERY clear: the modern trans movement is radicalizing activists into terrorists."

The tweet is here.  

From the expected NGOs and advocacy groups there have been outraged denouncements of the stated facts and against the argument that trans people are disproportionately violent.  It was a striking argument by Johnson but . . .  was it right?

As it turns out, yes, the four mass shootings he referred to were all committed by trans people.

But is that disproportionate?

Newsweek reached out to the Gun Violence Archive for further details via email on Tuesday.

On its website, Everytown Research & Policy cites 306 mass shootings in the U.S. since 2009.

"4 shooters out of over 300 mass shooters since 2009 are transgender or non binary. That's just 1.3 percent of all shooters," Anthony Zenkus, a lecturer in social work at Columbia University, wrote on Twitter. "You just proved our point: 99 percent of mass shooters in the United States are cis gendered."

According to the Williams Institute research center, around 0.6 percent of Americans over the age of 13 identify as transgender.

There are a lot of definitional games to be played with what constitutes a mass shooting and what constitutes a trans person.  But if we accept these definitions, then we have an unstated conclusion.  

Phillips gives us the data but then does not connect the dots.  

0.6% of Americans aged 13 or older identify as transgender.  Transgender individuals constitute, per Anthony Zenkus, a professor at Columbia University, 1.3% of all mass shooters.

Consequently one can confirm the second implied argument made by Benny Johnson, they commit 116% more mass shootings than one would expect.  More than twice as many.

Professor Zenkus seems to think that his numbers rebut Benny Johnson's argument.  Phillips does not make the point that the cited numbers confirm Benn Johnson's argument.

It has been a staple observation on Thingfinder that journalists in the mainstream media are innumerate.  In this instance all we can see is that the Columbia University professor is innumerate.  Perhaps Phillips recognizes that Zenkus is wrong but is just being polite in not mentioning it.  Or perhaps Phillips is as innumerate as the Columbia University professor.  

Regardless.  Newsweek is confirming Benny Johnson's argument.  Trans people are commit mass shootings at more than twice the rate one would expect given their representation in the general population.  

Does a mass shooting involvement exceeding twice what one would expect constitute enough evidence to support the argument that:

"One thing is VERY clear: the modern trans movement is radicalizing activists into terrorists."?

That is a different question.  The statistics are consistent with the claim but are inadequate to prove it.  We know that they kill at twice the rate we would expect but we don't know whether they kill because they have been radicalized.  Mental illness is a known issue in the trans community and might be the motive force rather than radicalization per se.

Still, it is interesting to see a statistical claim so vociferously mocked and ridiculed by the received opinion people also being sotto voce confirmed by Newsweek.