Trans Community Faces Backlash Following Tumbler Ridge Mass Shooting

In the aftermath of Tuesday’s devastating mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., that left nine people dead and 27 injured, transgender advocates are speaking out against what they describe as a predictable and harmful pattern of online backlash targeting their community.

Edmonton-based trans activist Marni Panas watched with dismay as social media discourse quickly shifted from mourning the victims to targeting transgender people after rumors emerged that the suspect might be transgender.

“This will just get uglier now for us and for our community as a whole, when our attention should be on the care of these victims and to support communities,” Panas said.

B.C. RCMP later identified the suspect as 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar. At a Wednesday news conference, RCMP Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald confirmed that Van Rootselaar was assigned male at birth, began transitioning to female about six years ago, and publicly identified as female.

But long before police had officially confirmed these details, anti-trans rhetoric was already spreading rapidly across social media platforms. Some politicians, pundits, and right-wing news outlets began claiming there was an “epidemic” of violence perpetrated by transgender individuals — assertions that experts say are demonstrably false.

Among those amplifying such claims was Tara Armstrong, an Independent MLA representing Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream, who made several social media posts Wednesday about what she called “transgender ideology,” claiming it was “radicalizing youth, and unlocking violent impulses.” Armstrong wrote on X that “there is an epidemic of transgender violence spreading across the West.”

American right-wing commentator Matt Walsh also weighed in, telling his four million X followers that transgender people “are the most dangerous and unstable group in existence and it’s not close,” without providing evidence to support his statement.

For Panas, this kind of discourse creates additional fear for trans people already grieving alongside the rest of Canada. “We feel the same things. We feel the sorrow, we feel the compassion, we feel the grief that all Canadians are for these families and these victims,” she said.

James Densley, co-founder of The Violence Prevention Project, which tracks mass shootings in the United States, emphasizes that claims about an “epidemic” of trans shooters are statistically unfounded. According to his database, 97.5 percent of mass shootings in the U.S. were carried out by cisgender men, two percent by cisgender women, and just 0.5 percent by transgender individuals — making trans people statistically underrepresented as perpetrators of such violence.

Densley attributes the false perception to what researchers call “base rate neglect” — when rare events are mistakenly perceived as patterns.

“When a shooter is transgender, that fact becomes the story, especially on social media. Whereas when the shooter is male, their identity is never really mentioned because it’s just unremarkable,” he explained. “That creates an asymmetry in the coverage, where people will recall all the unusual cases because they were unusual.”

Densley, who is also a criminology professor at Metro State University in Minnesota, notes there’s a “long and ugly history” of associating entire marginalized groups with violence based on statistically negligible cases. “It happened with Muslim Americans after 9/11, for example. It’s happened with young Black men for decades, and now it seems to be happening with transgender people as well,” he said.

Amelia Newbert, co-executive director of Calgary-based 2SLGBTQ+ advocacy group Skipping Stone, expressed frustration that her focus has shifted from grieving the tragedy to doing “damage control” for her community.

“The actions of a vocal minority to politicize this are not helping, they’re only harming,” Newbert said. “They’re only going to continue to inflict deeper wounds and deeper scars towards not just the trans community, but towards our country in general.”

British Columbia will hold a provincial day of mourning on Thursday for the victims of the Tumbler Ridge school shooting, with provincial officials focusing on mobilizing support for the affected community during this tragic time.