Thank You Mr. President
I stand corrected. I have been operating on the assumption that our president is incapable of expressing a coherent thought. And I hold reasonable authority for that assumption having been a practicing speech-language pathologist for more than thirty years. But according to the Washington Post, Trump actually made a logical statement in reaction to a preposterous presumption.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
I woke up on my 71st birthday feeling good that I’d gotten the best birthday present I could have asked for: I successfully completed my move to Michigan and sold my Arkansas property. I can go to the beach every day for the rest of my life, if I so choose. And daily walks on the windy shore might become a necessity to blow the stench of national politics off my soul.
Over my morning coffee, I perused the Washington Post and read, “Senior Justice Department officials have held multiple meetings since last week’s deadly Minneapolis Catholic school shooting to consider banning transgender people from owning firearms…”
???
If the actions of a single transgender shooter point to a probability that “transgender” is an indicator of mental illness, then I propose that “white” (52.3 % of mass shooters are white according to the NIJ/The Violence Project study) or “male” (97.7% of mass shooters are male, according to the same study) are even stronger indicators. Being a white man must positively confirm mental illness.
While it’s hard to pin down the exact percentage of mass shooters by race, sex, or gender identity because different sources have defined mass shooting in slightly different ways and measured the preponderance of these crimes over slightly different timespans, it’s pretty clear from a perusal of research that at least 90% were cisgender male, and well over half were white.
Less than 1% were transgender.
According to the Pew Research Center, 28% of lawmakers in the current congress are women. The majority are male. Further, 74% are non-Hispanic white. That’s a lot of potential mental illness, in my book.
Meanwhile, the first openly transgender member of congress gives no indication of mental infirmity. When Representative Keith Self of Texas indicated it was Representative Sarah McBride’s turn to speak during a foreign affairs hearing, he did so by saying, “I now recognize the representative from Delaware, Mr. McBride,” McBride was quick witted enough to respond satirically, “Thank you, Madam Chair.”
And when the House banned trans people from using single-sex bathrooms that match their gender identity, McBride said, “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms, I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families. This effort to distract from the real issues facing this country hasn’t distracted me…”
Talk of taking guns away from transgender people is another distraction. An attempt to steer attention away from the fact that there are more guns than people in this country, and mass shootings occur at a rate of more than one per day. A diversion to keep us from dwelling on the fact that the rich get richer—including gun manufacturers—while the middle class struggles to make ends meet and the poor are being denied assistance. Like a reverse Robin Hood.
But there was a brief statement of reason in all this. And it came from our president. This appeared in the Washington Post: “Asked by the Daily Caller, a conservative news outlet, whether the shooter’s ‘gender ideology played a role,’ President Donald Trump last week downplayed the likelihood. ‘Well, it could, but you know, I do say it’s also taking place with people that were not transgender, you know?’ Trump said, adding that ‘generally it’s people that aren’t transgender’ who commit mass shootings.”
Thank you, Mr. President.