FACT CHECK: No, Transgender People Are Not Behind A Surge In Mass Shootings
The perpetrator of this week's devastating mass shooting in northeastern British Columbia has been identified by the RCMP as 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, a transgender woman.
In a press conference on Wednesday, RCMP Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald confirmed that Van Rootselaar was assigned male at birth but began transitioning approximately six years ago. McDonald stated that Van Rootselaar “identified as female both socially and publicly.”
The shooting claimed a total of nine lives, including Van Rootselaar, police confirmed. One victim previously reported to have died en route to the hospital is alive and remains in serious condition.
The victims include one female educator, three female students, and two male students. Van Rootselaar's mother and stepbrother were also found deceased in their nearby home, bringing the total death toll to nine.
Claims Linking Transgender Identity To Violence
The shooting has reignited a contentious debate south of the border, where high-profile figures within the U.S. conservative movement have sought to link transgender identity with mass violence.
Speaking on “The Megyn Kelly Show” the day after the recent killing of far-right activist Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump Jr. claimed he could not “name a group that is more violent per capita than the radical trans movement.” In a separate Fox News interview, he asserted he couldn't “name a mass shooting in the last year or two in America that wasn’t committed by, you know, a transgender lunatic.”
Those comments followed a September 2025 report by PinkNews that the Heritage Foundation—the think tank behind Project 2025—had urged the FBI to classify “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism” as a domestic terror threat. Multiple news outlets also reported at the time that the U.S. Department of Justice was considering restricting firearm rights for transgender individuals.
The push followed an August 2025 mass shooting in Minneapolis, in which 23-year-old transgender woman Audrey Westman opened fire at Annunciation Catholic Church, killing two children and wounding 21 others before dying by suicide.
Data Show Transgender Perpetrators Remain Extremely Rare
Despite the political rhetoric, independent data shows that mass shootings carried out by transgender individuals are exceedingly uncommon.
According to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), which tracks U.S. gun violence, there were 5,748 mass shootings—defined as incidents with four or more people injured or killed—between Jan. 1, 2013, and Sept. 15, 2025. Of those, the GVA confirmed only five involved transgender perpetrators, representing fewer than one-tenth of one per cent of all such incidents.
By comparison, UCLA researchers estimate that transgender people account for 0.6 per cent of Americans over age 13. Had their rate of perpetrating mass shootings matched their share of the population, roughly 34 such cases would have been expected during that period.
The Violence Prevention Project at Hamline University in Minnesota, using a slightly different definition of mass shootings, reached a similar conclusion: 0.1 per cent were committed by transgender individuals, compared with two per cent by cisgender women and more than 97 per cent by cisgender men.
“The overwhelming pattern is clear and consistent: mass shootings are committed almost entirely by men,” said James Densley, the project's co-founder and deputy director.
One of the five cases cited by GVA was the 2022 shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs involved a suspect who initially claimed a nonbinary identity after the attack. However, court proceedings later indicated that the claim was unsupported by prior evidence and was widely viewed as a legal tactic. The suspect, Anderson Lee Aldrich, was prosecuted as a cisgender man and had expressed hostility toward LGBTQ people before the shooting.
The RCMP investigation into the Tumbler Ridge shooting is ongoing.
