In less than a week, eight people were murdered in two separate public shootings — one in a Canadian public school and another in Rhode Island — committed by two self-identified transgender women (biological men).
The back-to-back massacres have reignited allegations from conservative pundits that transgender ideology and individuals are more prone to violence and that the reason that transgender people engage in mass shootings is explicitly tied to their incongruent gender identity.
But hours after 56-year-old Robert Dorgan, also known as Roberta Esposito, opened fire Monday night at an ice rink where his son was playing hockey — killing his ex-wife, one of his children, and then himself — Democratic Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee made no mention of Dorgan’s documented history of mental illness or transgender identity, instead chalking the shooting to be another incident of “gun violence.”
“Too many Rhode Islanders know what it feels like to lose a loved one to gun violence,” McKee said.
McKee’s brief video message garnered strong criticism, particularly from social media influencer pastor Rev. Jordan Wells.
“He completely skips the shooter’s documented mental illness and transgender issues—his own daughter even called it out!” Wells wrote on X. “But Democrats stay silent on the real roots. No matter how many gun laws you pile on, without addressing repentance, the mental health crisis, and societal breakdown, this nightmare will keep repeating.”
Dorgan underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2020, ultimately causing his wife to divorce him, according to court filings obtained by local station WPRI. His “narcissistic + personality disorder traits” were also listed as a reason for his marriage’s breakdown, but his gender identity served as a point of contention in court battles for years.
Following the shooting, Dorgan’s daughter confirmed her father suffered from “mental health issues” and was “very sick.”
And on February 10 Jesse Van Rootselaar, an 18-year-old Canadian who has identified as a girl since he was 12-years-old, murdered his mother and stepbrother before traveling to Tumbler Ridge secondary school where he shot and killed five students and one teacher. The shooting marked the deadliest shooting in British Columbia’s history. Van Rootselaar was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Like Dorgan, Van Rootselaar had a documented history of mental illness issues.
Deputy Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said that officers visited Van Rootselaar’s home “multiple occasions over the past several years, dealing with concerns of mental health with respect to our suspect.” In one instance, police seized firearms “under the criminal code”. He was apprehended on several occasions for assessment under the Mental Health Act.
Van Rootselaar claimed on a Reddit account linked to him that he was diagnosed with ADHD and OCD. He said that he was on antidepressants in 2023 and that he has been prescribed antipsychotics, both classes of drugs accused by Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. of causing people more likely to commit shootings. However, evidence doesn’t back up Kennedy’s claims, instead showing most school shooters were not treated with psychotropic medication.
Prior to the most recent shootings, the last school shooting committed by a trans person occurred August 27, 2025 by 23-year-old Robin Westman, a transgender woman. He opened fire during an Annunciation Catholic Church mass, killing two children.
Like the most recent trans shooters, Westman had a lengthy history of mental illness, and killed himself on the scene. In a disturbing manifesto, Westman wrote that he “was tired of being trans” and wished he “never brain-washed” himself.
The mass shooting sparked national outcry and concerns about the mental wellbeing of trans people, prompting Democratic leaders like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to come to the defense of transgender community.
“I have heard about a whole lot of hate that’s being directed at our trans community,” Frey told reporters at the time. “Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community, or any other community out there, has lost their sense of common humanity. We should not be operating out of a place of hate for anyone.”
In the wake of the Annunciation Catholic Church mass shooting, the late Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA called for transgender Americans to not be allowed to own guns.
“If you are crazy enough to want to hormonally and surgically ‘change your sex,’” he posted, “you have a mental disorder, and you are too crazy to own a firearm.”
Notably, Kirk’s alleged assassin Tyler Robinson was in a relationship with a transgender woman.
Meanwhile, transgender advocacy groups accuse conservative leaders of demonizing the transgender community by saying mass shootings committed by trans people are linked to their transgenderism.
GLAAD pointed to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) data, revealing that of the 5,748 mass shootings between January 1, 2012 and September 15, 2025, only five were confirmed to be transgender.
“That means that transgender individuals were responsible for less than 0.1% of incidents over that time period, ” GLAAD wrote.
Even so, some of the shooters explicitly point to their gender identity as being directly linked to their killings.
For instance, in May 2019, two perpetrators, Devon Michael Erickson, 18, and transgender boy Alec McKinney,16, legally known as Maya Elizabeth McKinney, carried out a mass shooting at their high school – STEM School Highlands Ranch in Colorado. Alec explicitly stated she was explicitly targeting two students because they had bullied her for her gender ideology. She also said she suffered from homicidal and suicidal thoughts since she was 12 but refused to take medication.
The other mass shootings listed include the March 2023 shooting at The Covenant School by Aiden Hale, a transgender man formerly known as Aubrey Hale. She killed three children.
In November 2022, Anderson Lee Aldrich, who identified as nonbinary, opened fire inside a gay bar in Colorado Springs, killing five people.
And in 2018, a transgender man named Snochia Mosley, who also suffered from bipolar disorder, killed three co-workers at a Rita Aid warehouse in Maryland. She started hormone therapy a year prior to the shooting,
Troi Coley, a close friend of Mosley, told the Washington Post at the time that she was going through a “terrible time” with the hormones.
“Since then, she has been going through a terrible time,” said Coley. “She had just gone through this change, the hormone therapy, and struggling to find her way, but she couldn’t in the end.”
The transgender population is considered to be a high risk group when it comes to the develop of mental health illnesses. A 2020 Yale study found that people diagnosed with “gender incongruence” are six times more likely to have a mood or anxiety disorder than the general population, three times as likely to be prescribed antidepressants and anti anxiety medication than the general population and six times as likely to attempt suicide resulting in hospitalization than the general population.