Thursday morning was torn asunder at Perry Middle and High School in Iowa. It was the first day back from Christmas Break when a high school student, age 17, decided that he would take a shotgun, a handgun, and IEDs (improvised explosive devices) to his school and hurt or kill as many people as he could before he was stopped. That mentally ill student murdered a sixth grader and wounded five other students and two faculty members before turning the gun on himself.

For this community, the tragedy was accompanied by stories of great heroism. The school’s principal put himself between the shooter and students trying to escape. The vice principal carried a wounded student to safety. The police response time was a short seven minutes. These are the stories that Perry residents should hold onto and be proud of. Their school and their police acted swiftly and well.

Sadly, it is the 17-year-old villain who is going to get his name plastered on articles as people try to understand the mind of a teenage killer.

In the aftermath, information started to trickle out about the murderer. He had a TikTok account (which has since been deleted, as have much of his social media) that advertised an LGBTQ+ flag; he interacted with transgenderism-related Reddit forums; he had a video of himself waiting with anticipation in the school bathroom before the attack; and he was rumored to be “gender fluid.”

It is extremely important to note that authorities have not disclosed their findings regarding the motivation for the attack. Some testimonies by friends of the assailant have intimated that he was bullied.

It’s hearsay and speculation still at this point, but if his LGBTQ+ “identity” was a motivating factor (either because of bullying or because of circumstances related to gender confusion), this killer’s murderous actions mark another among a growing demographic of “TQ+”-identifying shooters.

Advocate, a Rainbow Mafia publication, was quick to point out that school shooters are more likely to be straight males than transgender. It also put forth the stupid “blame the guns” narrative. It was a human that killed that sixth grader; the gun was merely the tool.

Advocate’s main point about the typical makeup of a school shooter being a straight male is true. However, what it fails to take into account are two things.

First, though the LGBTQ+ instances of shooting up public places like schools are small, they are growing exponentially compared to the population of gender-confused people. Since 2018, there has been a rise in mass shooters from the trans- and nonbinary-identifying demographic.

• In 2018, a trans-idenfitying shooter shot up a Rite Aid distribution center.

• In 2019, a trans-identifying teenager attacked STEM School Highlands Ranch.

• In 2022, a mass shooter at Club Q claimed to be nonbinary.

• In 2023, the Covenant School murderer in Nashville, Tennessee, identified as transgender.

• Now in 2024, a likely gender-fluid-identifying teen attacks his school in Perry, Iowa.

When one considers that the number of people in the U.S. who identify as trans/nonbinary is a tiny fraction — less than 2% of the entire adult population, according to Pew Research Center — and that there has now been a least one shooting a year committed by a person claiming this identity, that seems to be a trend.

Second, the language and rhetoric surrounding the LGBTQ+ cult is that of violence and hate. This is particularly true for the newer additions to the alphabet like “transgender,” “nonbinary,” and “gender fluid” who are being told that the world is out to get them. The Gender Marxist rhetoric that gender-confused people are taught starts with implanting a victim mentality: If they are LGBTQ+, they are oppressed. That quickly escalates to messages from the Gender Marxist activists that the world is trying to kill them. Is it any wonder they are attacking? Remember the activists’ calls for a “Trans Day of Vengeance”?

When you add that violent rhetoric to the culturally induced gender confusion that these people are already struggling with, it’s a toxic mixture. People who claim a “transgender” identity are already particularly vulnerable to suicide. It’s not, though, because they aren’t being affirmed, like disingenuous physicians are claiming; it’s often because they are.

Because of “gender affirmation,” people with gender confusion are convinced that the emotional high of every procedure they undertake is going to last forever. It doesn’t, so they still aren’t satisfied. Gender affirmation is also encouraging a dangerous lie. Many transgender-identifying people are desperately trying to convince themselves that they can in fact be the opposite gender (or made-up gender or non-gender). But when they realize that is an impossibility, it’s devastating. Gender-affirmation care pushes these vulnerable people to more and more procedures, up to and including gender mutilation surgeries, puberty blockers, and hormones. Another way that gender affirmation kills is by masking the underlying mental illness, which was the main comorbidity. When that underlying mental illness becomes unbearable, it claims their life.

Also, in the cases of transgender or nonbinary shooters, suicide by cop or by self-inflicted wound was the choice for three out of the five.

Our culture is sick and our children are suffering. Perhaps it’s time to actually assess the problems rather than foisting it off on the tired “blame the guns” non-solution. Perhaps the problems are spiritual, mental, and even perhaps influenced by social media. In other words, it’s not going to be a quick or easy fix.