Horror author Stephen King’s response to a conservative attack on transgender people has gone viral on X.
Responding to backlash about Annunciation Catholic School shooting suspect Robin Westman being transgender, King wrote: “Trans is not the problem. He had a gun. That’s the problem.”
Why It Matters
From 2013 to 2025, only five out of 5,729 mass shootings involved transgender perpetrators, according to Gun Violence Archive. That accounts for just 0.087 percent of all incidents.
Still, conservatives have come out against the transgender community after the Annunciation Catholic School shooting suspect, Westman, was revealed to be transgender and was granted a name change in 2020 while still a minor.
Westman is suspected of killing two children at the Minneapolis school and injuring at least 17 people. Police said Westman died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
What To Know
Conservative commentator Matt Walsh spoke out online after Westman was revealed to be transgender.
“Every trans person is dangerously delusional,” Walsh wrote on X. “They are all mentally sick and doctors should be legally barred from affirming their mental illness in any way. Adult or child. Everyone knows it. Now innocent children are dying because so many people were too cowardly to speak up.”
King replied to Walsh, blaming easy access to guns rather than Westman’s transgender identity for the attack.
“Trans is not the problem. He had a gun. That’s the problem,” King said.
King went on to say: “As long as guns are easily available to crazy people, mass killings directed at soft targets will continue. This is a fact. Countries where it’s more difficult for crazy people to obtain guns have fewer mass killings. This is also a fact. Do with these facts as you will.”
King’s original tweet was retweeted more than 6,500 times, favorited nearly 50,000 times and has sparked a conversation with 23,000 comments.
Westman’s original name change occurred after a Dakota County District Court order said it was in the best interest of the child because the “minor child identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification.”
Upon learning this fact, many conservative thought leaders have said that transgender people shouldn’t be able to access firearms.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, wrote on X: “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.”
Meanwhile, Charlie Kirk, founder and president of Turning Point USA, wrote: “If you are crazy enough to want to hormonally and surgically ‘change your sex,’ you have a mental disorder, and you are too crazy to own a firearm.”
Westman is alleged to have started the shooting at 8:15 a.m. Wednesday, while the school was holding mass. Westman graduated from Annunciation in 2017, and her mother worked there.
What People Are Saying
King wrote on X: “As long as guns are easily available to crazy people, mass killings directed at soft targets will continue. This is a fact. Countries where it’s more difficult for crazy people to obtain guns have fewer mass killings. This is also a fact. Do with these facts as you will.”
Walsh wrote on X: “Every trans person is dangerously delusional. They are all mentally sick and doctors should be legally barred from affirming their mental illness in any way. Adult or child. Everyone knows it. Now innocent children are dying because so many people were too cowardly to speak up.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said during a press conference: “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. We should not be operating out of a place of hate for anyone. We should be operating from a place of love for our kids.”
What Happens Next
As law enforcement continues to investigate the shooting, the conversation around transgender people, mental illness and firearms is likely to continue.
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