Just before Charlie Kirk was struck in the neck with a fatal bullet he had the following dialogue with Hunter Kozak, a Utah Valley University undergraduate.
After checking to see if the microphone was working, Kozak opened by saying, “Hey Charlie, hopefully we are going to have a little bit more disagreement,” then proceeded. “Alright. A few weeks ago there was a transgender mass shooter. And ever since then – about three weeks later, the Trump DOJ said that we should start talking about revoking gun rights for transgender Americans. I think you are in support of this. Is it yes, is that fair to say?”
Apparently Kirk signaled affirmation and Kozak continued, “Alright. Great. So, do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?”
“Too many,” Kirk countered.
“I just want to point out, there is not a lot of empirical evidence there,” Kozak noted before supplying a number. “It’s five. Okay, five is a lot. I’m gonna give you some credit. Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”
“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk asked. That was his final dodge. For that matter, it was his last utterance.[1]
Besides exposing Kirk’s former disregard for substantive facts, the exchange emphasizes two aspects of autogenic violence: one relevant to the demography of perpetrators and the other to their provocation.
Gender Identification Vis-à-Vis Mass Shootings
Assuming the application of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) definition, the answer to the first query posed by Kozak should be calculated at six, not five.[2] Even so, Kirk’s evasive response aside, it amounts to 6 of 175 (over the preceding 10 years) or 0.342 (just under 3.5%), hardly indicative of an epidemic related to a preference for gender.[3] Other sources cite a percentage that is even lower. Discrepancies derive from differing definitions, the period of time included in estimates, or both.[4] Regardless, the proportion of trans individuals identified as mass shooters over the previous decade is, both mathematically and rhetorically, significantly lower than the two largest sub-groups committing that malicious crime since 1966: white assailants at 54.4 percent or males (regardless of sexual identification) at 95.3 percent.[5] Furthermore, “[t]ransgender, nonbinary, and gender-questioning young people reported higher rates of being impacted or knowing someone impacted by a mass shooting (22%), compared to their cisgender LGBQ+ peers (19%).”[6]
Despite these statistics, available to any person interested in investing just a few minutes in research, the Department of Justice, as a reaction to the assault on. The Annunciation Catholic School, is considering the possibility of restricting firearm access for transgender Americans.[7] That consideration aligns with the position of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), the political advocacy organization founded by Kirk.[8] In a tweet that went viral, Benny Johnson, a TPUSA official and columnist, proclaimed:
The Colorado Springs shooter identified as non binary [sic].
The Denver shooter identified as trans.
The Aberdeen shooter identified as trans.
The Nashville shooter identified as trans.
One thing is VERY clear: the modern trans movement is radicalizing activists into terrorists.[9]
The sentiment was retweeted with an exclamation mark by Elon Musk, self-infatuated ketamine obsessed billionaire and former close associate of Donald Trump.[10] As an aside, the threat to Second Amendment guarantees for a particular portion of the population is already forging a peculiar alliance of the LGTBQ+ community and advocates for firearm rights.[11]
Stochastic Messaging: An Accelerant for Performative Violence
How Rampage Killers Interpret Their Worlds recognizes the role of stochastic incitement as a possible mediatized accelerant for a devolving assailant on the precipice of an attack.[14]
Unwarranted accusations directed toward subgroups in a population is a propaganda measure used by tyrants and demigods to dehumanize selected sets of people. That sort of dehumanization has armed cisgender phobics, including Charlie Kirk, with justification for their enmity. Besides blaming transsexuals for mass shootings, Kirk also said they were responsible for inflation and “decline of American men”[12] (whatever that is supposed to imply). Referring to Deuteronomy 22:5, he also sternly pronounced transsexuality as “an abomination to God.”[13] The ugliness and potential deadliness imbued in such accusatory language, can legitimately be labeled as stochastic messaging – a form of systemic derogatory verbal jousting in which Kirk, the current presidential administration, and zealots have frequently indulged. That characterization leads to the second instructive point that can be derived from the final moments of Kirk’s tragically short life.
After the assault by Jared Loughner that included the attempted assassination of Gaby Gifford, the apropos term, ‘stochastic terrorism,’ martialized to encapsulate the fomentation of harm directed toward selected ideologies, individuals, ethnicities, or classes. … The adjective for this new classification of threat derives from ‘the Greek stochastikos, meaning ‘proceeding by guesswork’ and ‘skillful in aiming.’ The phrases are not contradictory. Targets may appear random, but the focus is purposeful. A stochastic message spreads through traditional media and/or social networks. … [M]essaging is purveyed by propaganda, conspiracy theories, divisive politics, and irresponsible proselytization. …
Antagonistic bating, rants, and commentaries become entangled in the rationalizations for assault in the minds of devolving mass murderers. Killers harboring bigoted notions or misanthropy … are particularly susceptible to these influences.
Selected groups when identified by race, gender, common affiliations, et cetera become vilified when they are publicly shamed by demigods, biased propaganda, or popular sentiment advancing the impression of anthropological inferiority with the deliberate intention of warping general discernment by repetitive denigration.[15]
Patrick Crusius, who killed 23 and injured at least 22 more in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas in 2019 justified his slaughter with xenophobic tropes vilifying immigrants.[16] Correspondingly, since 2016 Donald Trump, as a presidential candidate and then President, has demeaned people entering the country as invaders, murderers, drug dealers, terrorists, and animals.[17] Crusius disabused Donald Trump of influencing him, asserting instead, “ My opinions on automation, immigration, and the rest predate Trump and his campaign for president.”[18] As if the sequence of dog whistles has relevance as far as the potential for harm is concerned.
Crusius was an adherent to “Replacement Theory,” a perspective advanced by Renaud Camus, that espouses that non-Anglo-Saxon races through migration and injudicious propagation are engaged in a concerted effort to replace Whites in their homelands.[19] The philosophy has been adopted by White Nationalists and is encapsulated in the chant, “You [or Jews] will not replace us.” The refrain was chanted by thuggish demonstrators at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottsville North Carolina, where a driver was found guilty and sentenced to two life sentences for deliberately accelerating his automobile into a crowd, killing a counter protester and injuring 19 others, five critically.[20] Charlie Kirk was an advocate of the same pseudo-historical view, which, like his stance on violence driven by gender assimilation, has no basis in fact, sociological, biological, or otherwise.[21]
It is horrifically ironic that Kirk was killed as he fumbled with a question that would unmasked his deceptive use of popular phobias to advance his prejudicial agenda.
[1] Vera Drymon and Jon Haworth, “The Last Person to Question Charlie Kirk Describes the Moment as ‘Visceral,’” American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) News, posted September 12, 2025, https://abcnews.go.com/US/person-question-charlie-kirk-describes-moment-visceral/story?id=125505153; Eric Levenson, “Charlie Kirk’s Final Hours: How a Stage for Debate Became a Scene of Tragedy,” Cable News Network (CNN), updated September 12, 2025, https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/12/us/charlie-kirk-shooting-death-final-hours; Sanstuti Nath, ed., “Videos Capture Moment Charlie Kirk Was Shot Dead and The Chaos That Followed,” New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV) World, posted September 11, 2025, https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/video-charlie-kirk-was-talking-about-gun-violence-when-bullet-hit-him-9255987; Joe Sommerlad, “Last words of Charlie Kirk Before He Was Shot Dead on Stage,” Independent, posted September 11, 2025, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/charlie-kirk-shot-gun-violence-video-utah-b2825263.html; Washington Post, “Student Asks Kirk a Question Right Before Fatal Shooting,” YouTube Short, posted September 12, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WyrGUPYfm_c.
[2] Law Enforcement frequently uses the descriptor, “active shooter,” meaning “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.” FBI and Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT), Active Shooter Incidents in the United States, 2024 (Washington D.C. and Texas State University: U.S. Department of Justice and ALERRT: 2025), 1. Using the FBI’s specifications, the following perpetrators over the last decade have been identified as transgender or non-binary by authorities or by their own accounts: a) Randy Stair AKA Andrew Blaze (2017, Weis Supermarket, Tunkhannock, PA) b) Snochia Moseley (2018, Rite Aid Warehouse, Aberdeen, MD); c) Alec McKinney (2019, STEM School Highlands Ranch, Denver, CO); d) Anderson Lee Aldrich (2022, Club Q, Colorado Springs, CO); e) Audrey Hale (2023, Covenant School, Nashville, TN); f) Robin Westman (2025, Annunciation Catholic School, Minneapolis, MN). Associated Press (AP), Fact Focus: No ‘Incredible Rise’ in Transgender Shooters,’” posted March 30, 2023, Spectrum News, https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/ap-top-news/2023/03/30/fact-focus-no-incredible-rise-in-transgender-shooters; Google’s Knowledge Graph, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Query, “Mass Shooters Who Were Transgender,” culled from 17 webpages, accessed September 18, 2025; https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q =mass+shooters+who+were+transgender&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=active; Grok, AI Query, “How Many Mass Shootings over the Last 5 Years Were Carried Out My [sic] Transgender People?” culled from 29 webpages, X, accessed September 18, 2025; Grok, AI Query, “Is it true that seven School shooters in a row have been trans or non-binary?” culled from 25 webpages, X, accessed September 18, 2025; Aleks Phillips, “How Many Mass Shootings Have Been Carried Out by Transgender People?” Newsweek, posted March 28, 2023, updated September 12, 2025, https://www.newsweek.com/mass-shootings-transgender-perpetrators-1790854; Press and Sun-Bulletin Staff, “Supermarket Killer Outlined Plan Before Attack At Tunkhannock Market,” Pressconnects, posted June 8, 2017, https://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/local/pennsylvania/2017/06/08/dead-murder-suicide-pa-weis/102621742/; Reuters Fact Check, “Majority of US Mass Shooters Are Cis Men, Not Transgender or Non-Binary People,” Reuters, posted and updated, March 31, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/article/fact-check/majority-of-us-mass-shooters-are-cis-men-not-transgender-or-non-binary-people-idUSL1N363273/;Sophia Tulp, “Fact Focus: No ‘Incredible Rise’ in Transgender Shooters,” Associated Press, posted March 30, 2023, https://apnews .com/article/fact-check-transgender-nashville-shooting-misinformation-cd62492d066d41e820c138256570978c; Unites States Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, “Former Colorado Resident Sentenced to Life in Prison for Federal Hate Crimes and Firearm Offenses Related to Mass Shooting at Club Q,” press release, June 18, 2024, https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-colorado-resident-sentenced-life-prison-federal-hate-crimes-and-firearm-offenses.
[3] Ten year period: 2015-2024. Jaclyn Schildkraut, H. Jaymi Elsass, and Emily Greene-Colozzi, Figure, “Mass Shootings Have Been Steadily Increasing In Frequency Since 1966,” in Rockefeller Institute of Government, Mass Shooting Factsheet, updated September 15, 2025, https://rockinst.org/gun-violence/mass-shooting-factsheet/. The defining criteria conform with those specified in the beginning of the preceding note.
[4] Ashley Wang, “FactCheck: Few Mass Shooters Have Been Transgender,” Sentinel.com, posted September 18, 2025, https://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/091825_trans_shooters/factcheck-few-mass-shooters-have-been-transgender/#:~:text=Q:%20Have%20many%20of%20the,says%20happened%20in%20that%20period.
[5] Rockefeller Institute of Government, Mass Shooting Factsheet, under “Perpetrators.” Z score calculations for 2 population proportions: males vs. trans – z is -4.6027, p = < .00001; whites vs. trans – z is –17.2427, p = < .00001.
[6] Everytown Research & Policy in Partnership with The Trevor Project, The Relationship Between Firearms, Mass Shootings and Suicide Risk among LGBTQ+ Young People, posted June 6, 2024, under “Experiences with and Fears about Mass Shootings,” https://everytownresearch.org/report/research-brief-the-relationship-between-firearms-mass-shootings-and-suicide-risk-among-lgbtq-young-people/.
[7] Evan Perez and Hannah Rabinowitz, “Trump DOJ Is Looking at Ways to Ban Transgender Americans from Owning Guns, Sources Say,” CNN, updated September 4, 2025, https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/04/politics /transgender-firearms-justice-department-second-amendment#:~:text=But%20Justice%20Department %20leadership%20is,transgender%20people%20to%20be%20targeted.
[8] “Turning Point USA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk.” Turning Point USA, 2025, https://tpusa.com/about/.
[9] Benny Johnson@bennyjohnson, X, posted March 27, 2023; Phillips, “How Many Mass Shootings?”
[10] Elon Musk@elonmusk, X, posted March 27, 2023. The rambunctious business usury, personal exploitation of intimate associates, and delusional assessments of current social conditions (and his standing therein) have been chronicled through various news reports. Summative accounts may be found in the following: a) Interview with Villanova University Law Professor J.S. Nelson, in Harvard Law Today, “‘You Shouldn’t Be A Jerk to Get Ahead,’” posted February 7, 2023, https://hls.harvard.edu/today/the-business-ethics-of-elon-musk-tesla-twitter-and-the-tech-industry/; b) Hysteria, “Elon Musk: Everything You Didn’t Know About His Sh*tty Past,” YouTube, posted [September 2024?], https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y40RU5Nx6U&t=1471s; c) New York Times Podcasts, “The Chaotic Personal Life of Elon Musk,” YouTube, posted June 2, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v =lfDxO5Bg6jI; d) Raisini, “Exposing Elon Musk: The Dark Legacy of Deceit, Fraud, and Geopolitical Chaos,” posted August 12, 2024, https://raisini.substack.com/p/exposing-elon-musk-the-dark-legacy. Musk has a transgender daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, from who he is estranged. In a petition to Los Angeles County Superior Court to change her name, she attested, “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.” Daniel Arkin and Diana Dasrath, “Elon Musk’s Daughter Granted Name and Gender Change,” National Broadcasting Company (NBC) News, posted June 23, 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/elon-musks-daughter-granted-name-gender-change-rcna34984. See, also, her interview, in Ella Yurman, writ. and Andy Jackson, photo., “Vivian Jenna Wilson on Being Elon Musk’s Estranged Daughter, Protecting Trans Youth and Taking on the Right Online,” Teen Vogue, posted March 20, 2025, https://www.teenvogue.com/story/vivian-jenna-wilson-elon-musk-trans-youth.
[11] Theo Burman, “Proposal to Ban Transgender People from Owning Guns Sparks Fury,” Newsweek, posted September 5, 2025, https://www.newsweek.com/transgender-own-guns-justice-department-2124921; Aaron Pellish, “‘Blatantly Unconstitutional’: Second Amendment Groups Slam Floated Gun Ban for Transgender Americans,” Politico, posted September 6, 2025, https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/06/trump-gun-ban-pushback-00547529.
[12] Ryan Adamczeski, “Charlie Kirk DID Say Stoning Gay People Was The ‘Perfect Law’ – And These Other Heinous Quotes,” Advocate, posted September 15, 2025, https://www.advocate.com/politics/charlie-kirk-anti-lgbtq-quotes#rebelltitem2.
[13] Right Wing Watch@RightWingWatch, X, posted September 11, 2023.
[14] S. Lee Funk, (Washington D.C: Academica Press, 2024).
[15] Funk, How Rampage Killers, 198-199, referencing, G2geek [pseud.], “Stochastic Terrorism: Triggering the Shooters,” Daily Kos, posted January 10, 201, under “Stochastic Terrorism,” https://www.dailykos.com/stories /2011/1/10/934890/-; Jonathon Keats, “Jargon Watch: The Rising Danger of Stochastic Terrorism,” Wired, posted January 21, 2019, https:// www.wired.com/story/jargon-watch-rising-danger-stochastic-terrorism/.
[16] Patrick Crusius, “The Inconvenient Truth,” posted online August 3, 2019, https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php /1192782/mod_resource/content/1/The-Inconvenient-Truth.pdf; Robert Moore, “New Information about Walmart Mass Shooting Emerges in Recently Released Evidence,” El Paso Matters, posted July27, 2025, https:// elpasomatters.org/2025/07/27/dps-releases-video-evidence-aug-3-2019-el-paso-walmart-mass-shooting/.
[17] Amanda Terkel and Megan Lebowitz, “From ‘Rapists’ to ‘Eating The Pets’: Trump Has Long Used Degrading Language Toward Immigrants,’” National Broadcasting Company (NBC) News, posted September 19, 2024, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-degrading-language-immigrants-rcna171120.
[18] Crusius, “The Inconvenient Truth,” under “Personal Reasons and Thoughts.”
[19] Renaud Camus, You Will Not Replace Us (Las Vegas, NV: self-published, 2021); Julia Ebner and Jacob Davey, The Great Replacement: The Violent Consequences of Mainstreamed Extremism (London, England: Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2019), https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/The-Great-Replacement-The-Violent-Consequences-of-Mainstreamed-Extremism-by-ISD.pdf.
[20] Meghan Keneally, “What to Know about the Violent Charlottesville Protests and Anniversary Rallies,” American Broadcasting Company (ABC) News, posted August 8, 2018, https://abcnews.go.com/US/happen-charlottesville-protest-anniversary-weekend/story?id=57107500; Amir Vera, “James Fields, Who Plowed His Car Through A Crowd at 2017 Charlottesville Rally, Gets Second Life Sentence,” CNN, posted July 15, 2025, https:// www.cnn.com/2019/07/15/us/charlottesville-james-fields-life-sentence/index.html; Andrew S. Winston, “‘Jews Will Not Replace Us!’: Antisemitism, Interbreeding and Immigration in Historical Context,” American Jewish History 105, no. 1 (January/April 2021): 1-24, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/ajh.2021.0001.
[21] Media Matters Staff, “Charlie Kirk Pushes the ‘Great Replacement’ Conspiracy: ‘They Won’t Stop Until You and Your Children and Your Children’s Children Are Eliminated,’” Media Matters for America, posted March 1, 20, 2024, https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-pushes-great-replacement-conspiracy-they-wont-stop-until-you-and-your.