Conservatives Use Minnesota Shooter’s Identity to Attack Trans People
After the Minneapolis church shooting, conservatives seized on shooter Robin Westman’s transgender identity to push anti-trans rhetoric.
Social conservatives are claiming vindication for their views after Robin Westman, the 23-year-old behind the August 27 mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, was identified as transgender by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in an X post.
Armed with a rifle, shotgun, and pistol, Westman fired dozens of rounds into the church during a morning Mass attended by students from the affiliated Annunciation Catholic School, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said, as reported by The Associated Press.
Two children, ages 8 and 10, were killed. Fourteen other students and three parishioners in their 80s were critically injured but expected to survive. Westman was later found dead, behind the church, with a suspected self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The attack appeared calculated and premeditated, based on YouTube videos released that day and notebooks attributed to Westman.
At a press conference, O’Hara confirmed Westman had legally purchased all three guns used in the shooting. The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that in a notebook, Westman allegedly wrote it was “shockingly easy” to buy a gun from a pawnshop.
According to TIME, the now-removed videos appeared on a channel under the username “Robin W.” One, more than 10 minutes long, featured a handwritten “manifesto” addressed to family and friends. In it, an unseen narrator said, “I’m sorry to my family … that’s the only people I’m sorry to.”
The video showed guns, ammunition, and loaded magazines inscribed with phrases including “Where is your God?” “For the children,” “Suck on this,” “pain and hate,” “F****t,” “Kill Trump,” and “Mashallah,” the Arabic phrase for “God has willed it.” One shot showed an image of Jesus used as a target.
Another video showed two notebooks with handwritten Cyrillic text. In its final moments, the narrator flips to a church diagram and stabs the page with a knife.
The New York Post reported that one journal entry read, “I am feeling good about Annunciation. It seems like a good combo of easy attack form and devastating tragedy and I want to do more research. I have concerns about finding a large enough group. I want to avoid any parents, but pre and post school drop off.”
Another entry read: “Maybe I could attack an event at the on-site church … think attacking a large group of kids coming in from recess is my best plan. … Then from there I can go inside and kill, going for as long as I can.”
FBI Director Kash Patel said on X that the agency is investigating the attack as “an act of domestic terrorism and hate crime targeting Catholics.”
Like many mass shooters, Westman appears to have no fixed ideology but a broad inclination toward violence. The inscriptions range from anti-Semitic and racist slurs to anti-religious taunts and even attacks on right-wing ideology. There is little consistency, which is generally emblematic of a mentally disturbed individual.
Westman was a former student of Annunciation Catholic School, graduating from the eighth grade in 2017. The Star Tribune reported that a since-deleted 2021 Facebook post said her mother was retiring as parish secretary of Annunciation Catholic Church.
Westman’s notebooks present a complicated view of gender identity. “I don’t want to dress girly all the time but I guess sometimes I really like it,” Westman allegedly wrote. “I know I am not a woman but I definitely don’t feel like a man.”
An X user shared court documents allegedly showing Westman legally changed her name to Robin at 17 and “identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification.”
Social conservatives seized on Westman’s gender identity as the root cause of the violence. The attack reinforced right-wing claims that transgender people are mentally ill and dangerous, despite the fact that most school shootings are carried out by cisgender perpetrators.
Charlie Kirk, co-founder of Turning Point USA, wrote on X that Westman confessed to being “tired of being trans,” citing a New York Post story quoting Westman: “I wish I never brainwashed myself.”
“The evil perpetrated on young people by the trans medical industry is something future generations will look upon with horror,” Kirk wrote.
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene used the shooting to promote a bill she has been pushing for three years that would criminalize providing gender-affirming counseling or medical care to transgender minors.
“Today’s evil church school shooter was a trans who was likely groomed and transitioned as a teenager,” Greene wrote on X. “Congress MUST PASS my Protecting Children’s Innocence Act to make it a FELONY to perform sex change surgeries and all forms of medications on minors!!!”
She added, “Gender dysphoria is a mental illness and children are being targeted by the multi billion dollar medical and pharmaceutical industry. If they are willing to destroy themselves and how God made them then they are willing to destroy others and we saw that happen today.”
The LGB Courage Coalition, an anti-transgender group, called for stricter limits on gender-affirming care, measures to “protect” minors from “gender ideology,” and alternative support for transgender-identifying youth.
“Gender ideology may not cause violence directly, but it preys on the vulnerable,” the group said in a statement. “[G]ender ideology does not offer a path to mental health, stability, or alignment with reality. Instead, it fosters confusion, isolates vulnerable youth, and often cuts them off from the very people who love them most.”
“Parents need to start suing schools that let trans kids integrate into public schools. Those kids need to get psychiatric care. They don’t belong in the school system,” wrote right-wing foghorn Laura Loomer. “We might as well make it a national policy to keep trans kids out of the public school system. They used to have separate classes and school programs for mentally ill children. And they were kept away from the other kids for a reason.”
But Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (DFL) pushed back against attempts to use the shooting as license to demonize the transgender community.
“I have heard about a whole lot of hate that’s being directed at our trans community,” said Frey. “Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity. Kids died. This needs to be about them.”
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