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In many ways, Kimbrady Carriker seems to be the very model of a modern mass shooter. The suspect in a gun rampage in Philadelphia that left four men and a teen boy dead, Carricker was reportedly carrying an AR-15-style assault rifle and wearing a bulletproof vest. On his now-deleted Facebook account, Vice notes, “he posted repeatedly about his second amendment rights, his pro-gun stance, his support for former president Donald Trump, and his disdain for President Joe Biden.” A Tucker Carlson fan, he also posted ominous passages from scripture, turning them into threats.
But you wouldn’t know any of that from reading most right-wing media and social media accounts of the shooting–because some photos on social media showed Carricker wearing women’s clothing.
According to police and people who know him, Carricker is not trans, but rather an occasional cross-dresser. But such subtleties are lost on the right; his cross-dressing, and the fact that he once posted a Black Lives Matter raised fist on social media, have given them all they need to fit this shooting into their preferred narrative, in which a beleaguered white cis majority is under attack from violent trans and/or black activists.
Indeed, they love this “trans shooter” narrative so much that they’ve been pushing it for years now; if you look through the We Hunted the Mammoth archives, you can find many examples, some dating back as far as 2015, when a trollish Ted Cruz suggested that alleged Planned Parenthood shooter Robert Lewis Dear might be “a transgendered leftist activist.”
More recently, Tucker Carlson used the story of a mass shooter in Nashville as an excuse to launch what was effectively a holy war against “trans terrorism” said to be targeting Christians.
Bullshit. So let me repeat what I said back then, updated with current numbers from the Gun Violence Archive:
Trans people are actually far less likely to commit mass shootings than cis people, especially cis men, who are responsible for the overwhelming majority of these tragedies. Even if we just focus on recent years, the difference is stark. Since the start of 2018, five and a half years ago, there have been a staggering 3,057 mass shootings in the US, defined as shootings with four or more victims. Of these, three are known to have been by trans people. And now, allegedly, there’s one by a cross-dresser. (The Colorado Springs shooter, who targeted LGBTQ+ people, claimed to be nonbinary, but that seems to have been an attempt to troll the media; his lawyers use he/him pronouns.)
Even if we include Carriker as trans–he’s not–that’s four known trans shooters out of 3,057. That’s 0.13% of the total. If you don’t include Carricker, that’s 0.098%. Even considering that trans people make up only 0.5% of the American population (1.6 million), that’s a tiny number. “Trans terrorism” is not a thing, except in the minds (and the Tweets) of opportunistic right-wingers, who would much rather talk about the mythical trans threat than the widespread availability of AR-15 assault rifles and other guns that help to make mass shootings as lethal as they are. The right is very good at this sort of distraction; they really don’t care if their assertions aren’t true as long as they’re useful in flooding the zone with bullshit and drowning out the real debate.
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Fascists also enjoy getting their (false) story out there first. They figure that people won’t pay attention to the correction.
One of the goofiest styles of post is the “Conspiracy conspiracy! The media isn’t covering this store!” followed immediately by a link to the news media covering the story.
Right-wing media and skewed priorities: name a more iconic duo.
they had to bring race and gender into this and politicize the tragedy. smh.
@Ada Christine:
they had to bring race and gender into this and politicize the tragedy. smh.
Race, gender, sexuality, and politics have been fundamental parts of American mass shootings; what the right-wing media did was pull a DARVO, hijacking the narrative and trying to pretend that it’s all the fault of those scary scary Others who endanger nice respectable real people.
(And could we make a case to alien anthropologists that American culture doesn’t worship guns, to the extent of regular tacitly condoned human sacrifice? Because even White Cishet Christian Male Presidential Lives—four to date, and that’s counting only successful attempts—Matter less than gun rights?)
Nearly all of the shooters are still cisgender and hetero though.
So.. in a bit of perverse logic, calling anyone who commits a mass shooting ‘trans’ on large media outlets could be interpreted as the most effective deterrent we’ve got.
Being a martyr is one thing, but martyring your entire image/reputation in the eyes of the very peergroup you sacrificed all your freedoms for? Seems like it’d be a bridge too far.
(I’m playing devil’s advocate here. I already acknowledge anyone gullible enough to buy into any of this would be far too stupid to see what’s going on here, then realize it’d also happen to them)
@Full Metal Ox
that’s the joke, you know how whenever a shooting happens and sane people talk about reasonable restrictions on gun purchases and maybe having a society that isn’t so awash with violent rhetoric. the tragedy is “politicized” when one rightly points out the political angle of mass violence.
also, on one hand we’re to believe that mass shootings are an unavoidable consequence of freedom, EXCEPT when it’s somebody who can be even remotely credibly smeared in some way that doesn’t reflect badly on the status quo.
@Full Metal Ox,
And apart from the successful presidential shootings, we have the non-fatal shootings – I can immediately think of Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt, and – were any of the times Jackson was shot assassination attempts? If memory serves, they were mostly duels that he got into so that he could exploit the rules to legally murder more people.
No, seriously – and a lot of the ideas and beliefs involved show that we’ve had the association of guns and toxic masculinity here for quite a while.
As I understand it, the idea of a duel at the time was mostly to Prove Your Manliness by getting shot at, rather than actually trying to kill anyone. They duelist would do the whole stand back-to-back and walk so many paces, then turn at a signal and fire. Lack of skill and accuracy meant that you weren’t likely to hit, especially if firing as soon as you turned, but if you DID happen to kill your opponent, well, you were both very
stupidbrave for standing there while being shot at.But the thing was, you just needed to fire, and to stand there until your opponent had done so as well, thus proving your
disregard for personal safetymanliness. So a duel where both participants “just happened” to hit the ground instead of each other was perfectly Manly and Respectable, Cheers All Around, Let’s Have a Drink.But not for Andrew Jackson, bloodthirsty monster that he was. His favored method of dueling was to turn and hold his fire, letting his opponent get their hurried shot off. If they did him (and a number did), well they called him “Old Hickory” for a reason, and it isn’t like they had time to aim.
But now Jackson did. A gentleman’s
deep insecurityManly Honor required, as stated above, that they stand in place until their opponent had also fired. Which meant that Jackson could take his time carefully aiming at a stationary target, ensuring a kill shot. Which he did. A lot.The man was basically a serial killer who had found a way to do it in public and be praised for it.
Kind of like Derek Chauvin.
@Allandrel
Jackson was the target of at least one actual assassination attempt that I know of, the man took a shot with one pistol, which misfired, drew and fired a second, which ALSO MISFIRED, at which point Jackson charged the man with his walking stick before his bodyguards had time to respond to the danger, and beat him so viciously that his own bodyguards dragged him off the man.
But yeah, the bloody bastard was infamous for killing when he didn’t have to, as well as taunting individuals who survived their duels with him.
Note that Jackson actually invited Aaron Burr to stay with him a year after Burr had shot Hamilton in the liver, so he got his training in cold bloodily finishing his opponents from the source.
Stop misgendering her. Just because she’s horrible doesn’t mean you can also be transphobic. I am so appalled. I don’t feel safe reading your blog anymore. Do better.
@Fin
Uhh They’re not trans. they just occasionally did some cross dressing.
The right wing media system will do anything to avoid talking about the vast majority of shooters being white cis gendered males. So every time there’s someone who isn’t, they beat the point to death just to distract you. As an FYI: Tucker Carlson has lost 92% of his audience. He’s fast becoming irrelevant
@fin
Haha yu funi
Notorious right wing Canadian racist “gonzo journalist” Lauren Southern (who flew to Europe, rowed out and tried to turn boats of immigrants around in the middle of the sea) opens up about her horrible marriage, divorce, desire to leave the right, how she was the “beta bux” in the marriage, giving money to her narcissistic husband while being an unemployed stay-at-home-mom.
Of course Manosphere “god-father” Rollo Tomassi is having a field day with this.
And her, that is Lauren Southern’s, husband is a “Fed”. Supposedly he works for the Austrailian equivalent of the FBI? Though working for the post office also makes one a “Fed” since the PO is a Federal office. So the internet is ablaze with conspiracy theories about how he ended up being Southern’s husband. Also, he’s apparently Asian which angers her White Nationalist orbiters.