Marjorie Taylor Greene baselessly claims Philadelphia mass shooter was transgender

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and other conservatives are falsely claiming that a recent mass shooter was transgender. Like Greene, the shooter supported gun rights and former President Donald Trump.

On the evening of Monday, July 3, a shooter in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania killed five people. The gunman also shot two boys and injured two others who survived. Police arrested a 40-year-old male suspect named Kimbrady Carriker and charged him with murder, attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment, and weapons charges.

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Carriker’s now-deleted Facebook page shared posts from pro-gun groups supporting Trump and the Second Amendment, CNN reported. However, the right-wing website The Post Millenial posted a three-month-old image from Carriker’s social media that shows him with long braided hair, hoop earrings, and wearing women’s clothing, VICE News reports.

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Though the Post Millenial‘s article and Carriker’s Facebook posts both said nothing about his gender identity, Greene reposted a Twitter link to the article with the aforementioned image. Greene wrote, “Another trans shooter,” without offering any proof that Carriker is transgender.

Another trans shooter.https://t.co/w8zJ0GLc3e

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) July 4, 2023

Regardless of the shooter’s gender identity, nearly all mass shootings are committed by cisgender individuals — and most are men.

In a statement condemning right-wing claims about the suspect’s gender identity, Asa Khalif of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s LGBTQIA advisory committee said Carricker identified only as male.

“The language that is spewed out by the conservative press is violent and is dangerous and is targeting trans women of color,” Khalif said, according to The Daily Beast. “It’s rallying the community to be violent and we’re better than that.”

Khalif noted that trans women and men “are the most vulnerable to violence,” adding, “They want to live their lives and they have every right to do so, and we will not allow conservative bigots to use that type of language to attack trans people. This is about someone who used violence to hurt and harm our city and our community, and I’m sure they will be punished to the fullest extent of the law but we will not allow trans women, and particularly trans women of color, to be the scapegoats of bigots.”

However, right-wing figures like Greene and other conservative media outlets have repeatedly claimed that trans people are dangerous. Shortly after a late March school shooting by a possibly trans individual, Greene blamed the shooting on hormone medications that the shooter may have been taking. However, there’s no indication that the shooter was actually taking hormones, that such medications contribute to violent behavior, or that the shooter’s gender identity in any way motivated their behavior.

In late March, Greene claimed that a trans-affiliated “antifa” group in Washington, D.C. was organizing a violent protest event called the “Trans Day of Vengeance.” There was no public evidence that anti-fascist activists were in any way involved in the event. The event’s organizer said the event’s name was merely a play on the Trans Day of Visibility, the day upon which the subsequently-cancelled protest was scheduled to occur.

At the time, Greene wrote, “A day after a mass murder of children by a trans shooter? The people need to know about the threat they face from Antifa & trans-terrorism!!!”

In April, Greene’s colleague Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) said that affirming trans people’s identities will lead to school shootings. She said that being transgender and learning about societal oppression “radicalize” students and make them mentally ill, causing them to shoot up schools.

Both Greene and Boebert are Trump supporters who have incorporated violent gun imagery into their social media and political campaign materials. The National Rifle Association (NRA), the nation’s largest gun manufacturing lobby, gave Greene a 92% rating for supporting the expansion of gun rights. The NRA endorsed her 2020 re-election.

The United States’ gun homicide rate is more than double the average for all other world countries, according to the gun violence tracking media outlet The Trace. “Easy access to firearms – whether legal or illegal – is one of the main drivers of gun violence,” the human rights group Amnesty International said. The guns used in the Philadelphia shooting were privately made and untraceable “ghost guns.”

Greene’s previous social media posts said that an airplane never hit the Pentagon during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks; that all school shootings are fake; that California wildfires were started by a Jewish-owned space laser; and that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once sliced off a child’s face and wore it.