Kurt Mahlburg is a husband, father, freelance writer, and a familiar Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He is the Senior Editor at Australia’s largest Christian news site The Daily Declaration and a Contributing Editor at Mercator.
Why is the FBI covering for trans mass shooters?
Over many decades, United States law enforcement agencies have profiled a wide range of violent actors by motive – with anti-fascism, Islamism, environmentalism, racial supremacy and hard-line nationalism among the more common ideologies to inspire acts of violence.
With the 2020s now well under way, the time has come for us to acknowledge the existence of another genre of extremist: transgender mass murderers.
But don’t expect the agencies to take the lead on this.
Ever since the Covenant School attack in Nashville in March last year, the FBI and other outfits have been working overtime to obfuscate the truth about the transgender shooter who took the lives of three young students and three staff members at the evangelical establishment.
In the wake of the devastating attack, Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) Chief John Drake, when asked if the shooter was motivated by her trans identity, acknowledged that “there is some theory to that”. However, he advised that details would have to wait since the investigation was still ongoing.
It was the last we would ever hear from officials on the subject.
Then, in November last year, seven Nashville detectives were suspended in relation to the “unauthorised leak” of several pages of the shooter’s manifesto, according to a WSMV4 report. In those pages were ramblings against “white privilege”, among other indications of far-left ideology at play.
At the time, officials reasoned that the suspensions were necessary to protect “the integrity of the active, progressing investigation”.
It has now been almost 15 months since the attack and the public is still waiting for officials to explain what animated the deadliest mass shooting in Tennessee history.
Into the vacuum has rushed another leak. This time, The Daily Wire podcaster Matt Walsh obtained photographs of four more pages of the killer’s journal which “reveal the shooter’s anti-Christian, pro-trans, and perverse ideas in the weeks before the attack”.
In her writings, under the title “My Imaginary Penis”, the shooter discloses that she first encountered gender ideology in her early 20s, and wrote, “I finally found the answer – that changing one’s gender is possible.”
Walsh explains:
In one passage, the shooter rails against “Christian friends” that her parents have encouraged her to make. She writes, “Parents actually believe religion can change nature. That could explain why I don’t practice religion anymore. Let kids think for themselves.’ […]
Separately, she writes: “F*ck parents like them [who oppose trans ideology] who think of themselves first, and their preference of conservative religion…” and how she’d “kill to have had parents” who’d have given her so-called “puberty blockers” as a child.
Walsh highlighted the disturbing fact that, following the shooting, the Biden White House “claimed that trans people – not the murdered Christians – were ‘under attack’.” He continues:
The writings are distressing and highly emotional. At one point, she states, “Puberty = life sentence. The people in this world adds more bullets to shoot violent thoughts into my head on full-auto. I hate parental views; how my mom sees me as a daughter.” […]
Instead of worshiping God, the shooter states that she sees herself as a kind of deity. “Having a brain like mine has its godliness,” she writes at one point.
Walsh reveals another disturbing fact: that since the tender age of six, the shooter had been receiving treatment from Vanderbilt University Medical Center – incidentally, the same hospital that Walsh exposed in 2022 “as a purveyor of chemical castration and mutilation of children in the name of gender ideology”.
Writes Walsh, Vanderbilt “has remained silent on how, exactly, they were handling the shooter’s care. In fact, they haven’t responded to media inquiries at all.”
Also leaked this month was a copy of the FBI’s memo to Nashville Police justifying the cover-up.
Obtained by the Tennessee Star, the memo “strongly discourages” MNPD from releasing “legacy tokens” left by the mass murderer, in order to prevent the shooter from gaining “infamy and notoriety”, to avert “future attacks”, and to stave off public misconceptions that she was merely “mentally ill”.
Another reason the FBI gave for keeping the shooter’s manifesto under lock and key was to stop the spread of “false narratives” that could result in “unintended consequences for the segment of the population more vulnerable or open to conspiracy theories, which will undoubtedly abound”.
In the memo, reference was made to the 1999 Columbine High School attackers, whose materials were never released to the public. However, as noted by The Star, “redacted transcripts, excerpts and summaries of the contents of tapes are available online”. In other words, only in the case of the Nashville trans shooter have officials barred the public from knowing anything about the killer’s motives.
It is difficult to understand the reasoning of authorities apart from the sacred status now granted to gender ideology by the establishment. The FBI, the MNPD and the White House must protect the Nashville shooter from scrutiny because the views she held accord with their own.
It is for the same reason that the legacy press refuses to properly inform the public about the other trans mass shootings that have taken place in recent years. Far from being the first, the Covenant School attack is one of at least five that have been perpetrated since 2018. According to The Federalist:
The 17-year-old Iowan male who shot up his high school in January was known to flirt with inaccurate pronouns and transgender ideology.
The 28-year-old woman who shot and killed three children and three staff at a small Christian school in Nashville in March 2023 went by a male name and referred to herself with male pronouns.
The 22-year-old man who shot and killed five and injured dozens more at a Colorado Springs nightclub in November 2022 told courts he is “nonbinary “and uses “they/them pronouns,” and asked to be referred to as “Mx.” instead of “Mr.” by his lawyers.
The 16-year-old female who, along with another teen, shot up the middle school and high school sections of a Denver-area charter school masqueraded as a man and demanded people call her by a male name.
The 26-year-old female who shot and killed three employees and herself at a Rite Aid distribution center in Maryland in 2018 told family and friends she was trans.
Likewise, the Epoch Times recently reported:
The number of people aged 13 and older who identify as transgender in the United States is estimated to be about 1.6 million, or 0.6 percent of that population, according to the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law and Public Policy.
And although 0.6 percent of the 13-and-older population identifies as transgender, 5.4 percent of the mass shootings in recent years involved gender-confused individuals.
Assuming these numbers are correct, trans and gender-confused shooters are over-represented nine fold.
The reason the public deserves honesty instead of stonewalling from leaders and civic institutions is because so-called “gender-affirming care” may have consequences that scientific research is yet to uncover.
Assuming the shooter underwent such treatment at Vanderbilt, what role did cross-sex hormones play in changing her brain chemistry? Did taking testosterone make her more likely to commit violence? Did “transitioning” actually result in better outcomes for her – and for the city of Nashville?
Moreover, by celebrating her condition as a matter of “pride” rather than treating it as a serious mental illness, have Western societies made a grave error that is need of reversing? How will we know of our error if law enforcement agencies and the media keep the truth from us?
Perhaps it’s time for these agencies to stop protecting and defending a bizarre gender cult and get back to protecting and defending the United States.
