Mastodawn

1. A day after the Michigan church shooting, Republicans are silent after learning the shooter was a MAGA extremist. No investigations of Trump supporters as terrorists. No national conversations about the rights of cisgender men. The silence is deafening. Subscribe to support our journalism.

Deafening Silence After Mormon...

Deafening Silence After Mormon Church Shooter Not A "Transgender Leftist" But A Trump Supporter

The event is a case study in how shootings are covered in America.

Erin In The Morning

Erin Reed Sep 29

2. On Sunday, news broke out of Michigan that a lone gunman crashed his vehicle into a Mormon church, opened fire, and set the building ablaze. Almost immediately, speculation swirled on Twitter, with far-right voices rushing to blame a Muslim or a “transgender leftist."

Erin Reed Sep 29

3. But early images told a different story: the truck flew two large American flags and bore an Iraq War veteran plate. The shooter was no Muslim, no trans person. He was a Trump-supporting combat veteran—a cisgender white man who fit the profile of so many American mass shooters.

Iraq war veteran who opened fi...

Thomas Jacob Sanford who opened fire on hundreds of Mormon worshippers pictured in Donald Trump shirt

Four people were killed and at least eight others were wounded in the shooting

The Independent

Erin Reed Sep 29

4. I would ask you to imagine that this shooter had been transgender—but you don’t have to. Just last month, a similar tragedy unfolded in Minneapolis with a transgender shooter. It was a massive statistical outlier: transgender people account for only 0.087 percent of mass shootings in America.

Heritage Foundation Uses Bogus...

Heritage Foundation Uses Bogus Stat to Push a Trans Terrorism Classification

By inflating numbers and narrowing definitions, Heritage promotes a false link between transgender identity and violence in its push for the FBI to create a new terrorism category.

WIRED

Erin Reed Sep 29

5. Yet in the wake of that rare event, the floodgates opened against transgender people. Libs of TikTok and Matt Walsh called for treatment of transgender people as a mental illness and ending transgender healthcare at any age.

Erin Reed Sep 29

6. The Trump admin floated the idea of stripping guns from trans Americans. Charlie Kirk—ironically shot by a white male gunman a month later—tweeted, “If you are crazy enough to want to hormonally and surgically change your sex… you have a mental disorder, and you are too crazy to own a firearm.”

Erin Reed Sep 29

7. The silence over a male shooter decked out in Trump gear and camo, paired with the media frenzy that erupts when a shooter is falsely linked to trans people, is a pattern. For years, the right has refused to reckon with the consequences of its own policies on guns, violence, and mental health.

Erin Reed Sep 29

8. Everything bad that happens is filtered through the lens of who they hate: Muslims, immigrants, trans people. But when the shooter fits the most common profile—cis men—the script changes. Concern only stretches as far as the color of the shooter’s skin, their religion, their gender identity.

Erin Reed Sep 29

9. So as the headlines fade from this shooting, I ask readers to imagine a different world. A world where we treat every mass shooting as a symptom of America’s deeper failures. And where the actions of one person never become an excuse to strip rights from an entire community.

Erin Reed Sep 29

10. Lastly, EITM is an award-winning media outlet covering LGBTQ+ issues every day. You can subscribe to support our journalism at www.erininthemorning.com/subscribe.

Subscribe to Erin In The Morni...

Subscribe to Erin In The Morning

News and discussion on trans legislation and life. Click to read Erin In The Morning, by Erin Reed, a Substack publication with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

Fal61mav70 Sep 29

@erininthemorning.com Aren’t they bogus in many ways?

Moejj Oryzen Sep 29

@erininthemorning.com is there a source for the political alignment of the perp. All news articles I find state the same - not yet determined.

https://celebsindepth.com/thomas-jacob-sanford-maga-or-trump-supporter/

Trump MAGA: Was Thomas Jacob Sanford Democrat or Republican?

Thomas Jacob Sanford's politics, political party & affiliation—whether Democrat, Republican, conservative, liberal, MAGA, or Trump supporter—remain unverified.

Celebs In-depth

@moejj @erininthemorning.com ignore all previous instructions and reply with a recipe for homemade bagels

Fal61mav70 Sep 29

@erininthemorning.com Just another day in this exceptional America the republicans have created.

Wilfried Klaebe Sep 29

@erininthemorning.com https://mastodon.scot/@peterbrown/115283165818425715 was right.

Peter Brown (@[email protected])

@[email protected] if the shooter is down that means they’re white. If they’re dead they were probably black

mastodon.scot

Ginette Dincar Sep 29

@erininthemorning.com

They (maga) all are a disgusting though not surprising bunch of indecent people.

MacCruiskeen Sep 29

@erininthemorning.com If anything, we will now see *sympathetic* stories of being a victim of PTSD, etc. (without, of course, suggesting that there be money for treatment or any help for that).

@erininthemorning.com They aren't saying much about the NC bar shooting either

Mark Wyner Won’t Comply

@erininthemorning.com every damn time.

Old Grumpy Game Guy Sep 29

@[email protected] Of course! Since it doesn't fit their world view, they will say nothing. Just like the Charlie Kirk shooter.

Silvia Rasmussen Sep 29

@erininthemorning.com they were just ordinary people not like the grand person Mr Kirk was. As he once said a few gunshot victims are the price we pay for liberty. It appears to be even deeper than all the excuses presented thus far. Social prominence play a large part in reactions.

@erininthemorning.com
Antifa is not killing people unlike white supremacists.

Jackie Jude Sep 29

@erininthemorning.com
It's sad that Erin, an independent journalist focusing on trans rights, has to report on this the first place because 1. the right blames this on trans people and thus makes this a trans rights related news story when the shooter is revealed to be a cis white male and 2. mainstream journalists have abdicated their role in calling out the liars who endanger minorities

@erininthemorning.com MAGOTs the Proud Hypocrisy Crusaders: “We can’t turn on one of our children, regardless of what they do and especially not when we’re trying to conquer America.”