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By Khaleda Rahman
National Correspondent
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The suspect in the mass shooting at a Catholic Church and school in Minneapolis has become the latest U.S. mass shooter to spark a debate because they are apparently transgender, but experts say such perpetrators are "extremely" rare.
It's not clear how Robin Westman, 23, identified recently. But court records reviewed by Newsweek show Westman was granted a name change from Robert to Robin in 2020. A judge approved the petition signed by Westman's mother that said the "minor child identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification."
That prompted some conservatives to allege a "pattern" when it comes to transgender individuals and violence, with some arguing that they should not have access to guns.
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In recent years, conservatives have increasingly pointed to incidents committed by people allegedly identifying as transgender or nonbinary to suggest they are a threat. However, data shows that mass shootings by transgender individuals are rare and the vast majority of perpetrators are cisgender men.
"Mass shootings by transgender people continue to be extremely rare," Jaclyn Schildkraut, executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the Rockefeller Institute of Government told Newsweek on Thursday.
"To my knowledge, this is the first perpetrator since Nashville who identified as transgender."
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The Context
Authorities said Westman shot dozens of rounds through the windows toward children sitting in the pews during Mass at the Annunciation Catholic School on Wednesday. Two children, aged 8 and 10, died. Fourteen other children and three elderly parishioners were wounded, but expected to survive. Westman was found dead by suicide, police said.
What To Know
Benny Johnson, a right wing commentator, wrote on X that "one thing is VERY clear: the modern trans movement is radicalizing the mentally ill into becoming violent terrorists who target children for murder."
Johnson's post cited six shootings besides Wednesday's incident since 2018 that were allegedly committed by transgender or nonbinary perpetrators.
"The pattern is undeniable: Today's Annunciation Catholic Church shooter identified as trans. The Nashville Christian shooter identified as trans. The Lakewood Church shooter identified as trans. The Colorado Springs shooter identified as non binary. The Denver shooter identified as trans. The Aberdeen shooter identified as trans. The Iowa high school shooter was a trans activist."
The nonprofit Gun Violence Archive, which began collecting data on gun violence in the U.S. in 2013, has recorded more than 4,100 mass shootings since the start of 2018. The GVA defines a mass shooting as four or more shot or killed in a single incident.
But only three of the mass shootings cited in Johnson's tweet, not counting Wednesday's incident, were carried out by individuals who were reportedly transgender: the 2023 shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, the 2019 shooting at a Denver-area charter school and the 2018 shooting at a Rite Aid warehouse in Aberdeen, Maryland.
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Police debunked claims that the person who opened fire inside Lakewood church last year was transgender. And authorities have not confirmed the gender identity of Dylan Butler, the teenager who opened fire inside an Iowa school last year, though conservatives seized on screenshots from Butler's social media accounts to claim he was transgender. And in the case of the Colorado Springs shooting at a gay club, suspect Anderson Lee Aldrich's lawyers wrote in court documents that their client identified as nonbinary but reportedly later used he/him pronouns in court.
Calculating statistics when it comes to mass shootings does vary since organizations define incidents differently.
And there is "unfortunately no way for us to quantify how rare shootings more generally perpetrated by transgender people are because this is not information that is collected in crime statistics," Schildkraut said.
"National crime data, like that National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) from the FBI—as well as mortality data for that matter—captures and reports data based on biological sex, which means yesterday's shooter likely would be reported as male."
According to The Violence Project, which records data on mass shootings dating back to 1966, less than 1 percent of mass shootings have been committed by transgender individuals.
The project focuses on mass shootings in public where four or more people were killed, not counting the shooter. Per that methodology, the 2023 shooting at a Christian school in Nashville is the only case of a shooting by a transgender person included in the database.
An update from the Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA Law, in August 2025 estimates that about 2.86 million people age 13 or over—roughly 1 percent of the U.S. population over that age—identify as transgender. That includes around 2.1 million adults (0.8 percent) and around 724,000 youth ages 13–17 (3.3 percent).
Using the GVA definition, the U.S. recorded 4,134 mass shootings since January 1, 2018. The three confirmed incidents involving transgender shooters account for around 0.07 percent of these, or around 1 in 1,378. This is far below transgender people's roughly 1 percent share of the population age 13 or older. Even if the latest case is included, the proportion rises to only around 0.1 percent.
What People Are Saying
Jaclyn Schildkraut, executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the Rockefeller Institute of Government, told Newsweek: "Mass public shootings, like what happened yesterday in Minneapolis, are exceedingly rare (less than 0.5 percent of all crimes that occur annually). Mass public shootings by individuals identifying as transgender are a mere fraction (likely an even smaller percentage of incidents). Therefore, the fact that yesterday's perpetrator identified as transgender is exceedingly rare.
"This cannot be overstated at a time when people's gender identity is under attack, as it risks criminalizing a largely nonviolent population who are often the victims of crime rather than the perpetrators—same as why we need to be mindful of criminalizing mental illness (individuals with mental illness are more likely to be the victims of crime rather than the perpetrators)."
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote on X: "We have confirmation that the shooter at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, MN was a 23-year-old man, claiming to be transgender. This deranged monster targeted our most vulnerable: young children praying in their first morning Mass of the school year."
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said at a news conference on Wednesday: "I have heard about a whole lot of hate that's being directed at our trans community. 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 … Kids died today. This needs to be about them."
What's Next
The shooting remains under investigation as authorities search for the shooter's motive.
Update, 8/29/25, 8:30 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
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