LGBTQ Times

The goal is clear: manufacture panic, assign blame, and offer a scapegoat. It’s always been easier to point at a community of individuals and use them to sow chaos and hatred. Governments have been doing this for thousands of years, and yet somehow we never seem to recognize history repeating itself until far too many people have already been killed. Today, the group being cast in that role in America are transgender people.

Nihilistic Violent Extremism (NVE) is defined as criminal conduct driven by hatred of society and a desire for chaos. It’s not about politics or religion; it’s about destruction for its own sake. This is the term some in the Trump administration, alongside allies in Congress and the FBI, are now trying to pin on every transgender American.

This isn’t about policy; it’s scapegoating. Right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation are lobbying hard to brand “gender ideology” as extremism, while conservative media amplifies the narrative. The assassination of Charlie Kirk poured gasoline on this fire: within hours, headlines suggested the attack was fueled by “gender ideology,” even claiming bullets bore trans-related engravings. Law enforcement has never confirmed this. Some officers even warned about false narratives. But by then, the damage was done. Charlie became a martyr, and within days the story fit the panic they wanted to sell.

This is how fear works. Create a villain, spread a rumor, and let the public fill in the blanks. Trans people become the easy target: visible, misunderstood, and convenient for politicians who would rather blame neighbors than address systemic failures.

But speculation is not evidence; and the hard numbers tell a different story. According to Mother Jones, The Violence Project, and the Gun Violence Archive, between 1982 and 2024 there were over 140 mass shootings with at least four fatalities. Only three involved shooters identified as transgender or nonbinary. Three.

• 2022: Denver, Colorado – shooter identified as nonbinary
  
• 2023: Nashville Covenant School – shooter identified as transgender male
  
• 2023: Aberdeen, Maryland – shooter identified as transgender female
  

That is less than 2% of all incidents. By contrast, 97–98% of U.S. mass shooters are cisgender men. Claims that “gender ideology” is producing mass shooters are flatly contradicted by the data.

The broader picture of violent crime is no different. FBI Uniform Crime Reports and Bureau of Justice Statistics show 1.3 million violent crimes were reported in 2022, with 80–82% committed by men and 18–20% by women. Federal reporting does not even track transgender or nonbinary identity as categories. What evidence does exist shows no elevated crime rate among transgender people. What it does show is an elevated risk of being victims of violent crime.

The Williams Institute at UCLA found transgender people are four times more likely to be victims of violent crime compared to cisgender people. In 2022 alone, at least 38 transgender Americans were murdered, most of them Black trans women.

That’s the truth. Trans people aren’t driving violence; we are surviving it. Yet this administration would rather twist definitions, erase protections, and weaponize labels like NVE to criminalize our very existence.

If there is any extremism here, it isn’t found in the LGBTQ community. It’s in the campaign to rewrite reality, to turn neighbors into threats, and to make people fear those already fighting hardest just to live. So when politicians tell you trans people are extremists, ask yourself who benefits, who profits from keeping you scared, angry, and ready to point fingers. Just turn on your television and you’ll find the answer.