On The Nashville Shooter From a Trans Perspective

Over the last decade, like many of you, I’ve sat day after day, week after week, reeling from the horrific mass shootings that have turned America into blood drenched battleground. From churches, shopping malls and departments stores, to city parks and college campuses- and even small schoolhouses where our most vulnerable are learning their alphabet; Murder is commonplace by gun wielding extremists who leave death in their wake.

It is clear that our legislators simply don’t care- in fact, after each unspeakable tragedy, the immediately take to the conservative airwaves and television networks to defend guns instead of console a mourning nation. While the world looks on in horror, Americans have become mostly desensitized to the new normal. It is a common, predictable occurrence now that fetches nothing more than thoughts and prayers from lawmakers who will lay blame at the feet of the mentally ill, the poor, people color or wherever it is most advantageous for them to thwart accountability or a responsibility to the safety of the lives they govern.

The shooter in Nashville, Tennessee, the southern US city where the most recent killing spree took place at a Christian school- where the murderer one attended as a student- happened to be transgender. It is lawmakers in the state of Tennessee have aggressively attacked trans individuals, using Drag Queen performers, their attire and culture as a red herring to actually disenfranchise transgender women, children and their families. They implemented…