The Nashville Tragedy

On Monday, a 28-year-old shooter broke into Covenant school in Nashville, Tenn., and murdered three adults and three nine-year-old children. Within 14 minutes, police had arrived and shot the assailant dead. As ever, it wasn’t long before the slow trickle of information was engulfed in an avalanche of talking points. This time, they concerned not only gun control but transgenderism.

At least for some journalists and commentators, it is impossible to imagine that the perpetrator was simply a disturbed and hateful person — no, social-justice morality tales have to be read into her hideous crime.

The charade began when local police first reported the shooter’s sex as female but initially omitted that she identified as a trans male. Accordingly, some initial media reports made the natural biological point. The New York Times, for instance, first reported: “Female assailants in mass shootings in the U.S. — like the one that occurred on Monday in Nashville — are extremely rare.”