Aubrey Hale, 28, went on a rampage at Covenant School in Nashville on March 27.
Hale showed up with three guns and killed three children and three adults before being fatally shot herself by responding police officers. Her attack was carefully planned out, say police who found detailed maps of the school.
And Hale was transgender, identifying as a male, police say. Her parents have also said she was under a doctor’s care for an “emotional disorder.” At least one source says Hale had a strained relationship with her Christian parents, who couldn’t accept her identification as transgender.
A handful of other U.S. shootings in recent years have also involved individuals who identified as gay or transgender.
Given the sheer number of mass shootings in America, to argue from this handful of cases that transgender people are more inclined to commit acts of violence would be unfounded.
But in the wake of Hale’s tragic act, there have been messages of hatred and violence from the trans community and “allies” that are perhaps just as terrifying, that reveal a deep level of pain and suffering.
One girl was seen holding a sign that reads: “TRANS RIGHTS OR ELSE,” with pink, blue, and white guns.
A Twitter user named UsoSirius tweeted: “I hope it was Republicans that lost their lives. One good thing about Gun Violence is occasionally wipes out full Republican families in one fell swoop. I would like to thank congressional Republicans and the NRA.”
One activist had a rather threatening message: “Trans people in Tennessee, it’s time to f---ing fight… Fight them, hurt them… Carry a weapon at all times. And yes, you have to attack the police officer… We don’t have time to make progress—we have time to FIGHT!”
Another tweet, from Get Better Records, reads: “EVERY DAY IS TRANS DAY OF VENGEANCE,” with a hand holding a knife.
While there was a rush to claim Trans Day of Vengeance isn’t real, it was, indeed a real event planned for April 1 outside the U.S. Supreme Court, though it was eventually canceled in the wake of the shooting.
America is at a point where many on the left no longer even care about trying to make a rational argument. Just scream and shout and carry out violence—might makes right, as they say.
This trend was clearly seen in the many violent Black Lives Matter protests a few years, and simply in the way people interact online.
Following the shooting, the Trans Resistance Network tweeted a media statement which, while expressing sympathy for the victims on the one hand, also emphasized that transgender people feel like they suffer at the hands of religious and conservative people.
And some media outlets crafted their headlines in a way that concealed and distorted what happened. Reuters reported: “Former Christian school student kills 3 children, 3 staff in Nashville shooting,” thus giving the impression that the shooter was a Christian.
Just a few days before the shooting, Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks, who typically tells people not to get guns, made a notable exception: “They are actually in danger. They have had hundreds of laws passed against them. They have right-wing media ginning up fear against them 24/7. They are targeted more than any other group in America. And if anyone should get guns, it should be trans Americans, okay? Because I’m worried for them. I’m worried that the right-wing lunatics are going to attack them, as they have over and over again.”
After the shooting, The Young Turks ran a segment lambasting the right for talking about Hale’s transgenderism.
Everything about this story is deeply tragic. Of course, the lost lives. And whatever one may think of transgenderism, it’s certainly tragic that a person could come to the point in their lives where such violence would seem to make sense.
It’s easy enough to imagine that Hale truly was suffering some form of mistreatment from peers when what she really needed was someone who would listen to her, comfort her, and show her genuine love. People can be cruel, especially schoolchildren, and though Christianity is a religion of love, that is no guarantee that every Christian lives up to that calling.
While we do not know what exactly was going on in Hale’s mind, what her experiences were, it is clear that she had her internal struggles. Of course, this is true of any shooter, and indeed, everyone is wounded and broken in their own way.
But whereas we typically recognize that certain aspects of ourselves must be fought against, must be healed, when it comes to transgenderism, society victimizes these poor people, encouraging them to continue as is.
Those voices that have been warning of the slippery slope of the LGBT movement for decades were plainly right. First, gays and lesbians just wanted to be accepted, they say, but it obviously didn’t stop there. We’ve slipped down the slope so far that libraries are hosting “drag queen story hours” and young children are dressing up in drag and performing provocative dances for adults (see, for instance, Desmond is Amazing).
There is even the horrific story of James Younger, a 9-year-old boy whose crazed mother wants to chemically castrate him and force him to live forever as “Luna.” His father is desperately fighting for both his physical and mental health, but even in conservative Texas he has faced many legal obstacles.
In 1997, Ellen DeGeneres’ hit show was canceled after she came out as a lesbian. But they kept chipping away—fast forward 25 years, and homosexuals are everywhere in the media. Ellen bounded back with a hit talk show, and many forums online have people asking: “Why does every show have a gay character now?”
Even deeply held moral stances can be eroded and changed by familiarity over time. And lately there has been a trend of remaking classic stories with well-known characters recast as sexual minorities.
One of the most ridiculous examples as of late was the animated film Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! released late last year, in which one of the sleuths, Velma, was explicitly portrayed as a lesbian.
“It does feel great to be a part of normalizing representation, especially with such a well-known franchise like Scooby-Doo!” commented director Audie Harrison.
Scooby-Doo! has been the favorite of American kids everywhere since the late 60s. As a kids show, of course, there was never any reason to go into the sexual life of any of the characters, but too many in power now openly fight to sexualize children at younger and younger ages. Grooming is very real, both in the sense of traumatizing children so that they turn out gay and in the sense of getting them to at least be allies through saturating their lives with the gay agenda.
The LGBT agenda drivers seem to have especially latched onto superheroes. NBC News published an article on a dozen superheroes who came out in 2021.
In 2018, Book Riot published a list of 14 LGBT retellings of classics, including reworkings of Macbeth, Peter Pan, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, and more.
But while the people pushing such an agenda loudly claim that they are “pro-LGBT,” what we are seeing is that they are actually hurting these people and contributing to sad acts of violence in society. Transgender people are, in fact, victimized by those who claim to love them. And victimization is an unfortunate cycle.
