Genesse Moreno : “Lakewood Church Shooter Debunked: Ted Cruz and Don Jr Embrace False Claim of Transgender Woman – Controversial!”

Latest US News: Conservative Pundits Continue to Spread False Claims About Lakewood Church Shooter’s Gender Identity

Unfounded Claims Regarding the Lakewood Church Shooter’s Gender Identity Persist Despite Police Confirmation

Conservative pundits, activists, and politicians have continued to spread the unfounded claim that the Lakewood church shooter was a transgender woman – even after it was kiboshed by police.

Genesse Moreno, a 36-year-old individual, opened fire inside Joel Osteen’s megachurch in Houston, Texas on Sunday, sparking a gunfight with two off-duty law enforcement officers. The incident left her seven-year-old son, whom she had brought with her, fighting for his life in the hospital.

During a press conference on Monday, Houston police stated that, despite Moreno sometimes going by the alias “Jeffrey Escalante”, their investigations found no evidence of her ever identifying as any gender other than female.

The Independent has also found no mention of any transgender identity in court documents from Moreno’s past divorce and child custody battle. Police have confirmed that she was the biological mother of her son.

However, conservative crusader Chris Rufo, anti-LGBT+ activist Chaya Raichik, Donald Trump Jr, and even Texas Senator Ted Cruz have continued to latch onto the idea.

On Tuesday morning, Don Jr on X, formerly Twitter, stated, “Per capita, violent trans extremists have become the most violent group of people anywhere in the world.”

Ms Raichik, who runs the Libs of TikTok account on X, has persistently called Moreno a “trans terrorist” without providing any evidence, even as she posted clips of other portions of Monday’s press conference.

Even after the claims were debunked during the briefing, Mr Cruz shared one of Ms Raichik’s posts on Tuesday afternoon, accompanied by an emoji of a man covering his face with one hand.

The false claim seems to have originated from the left-leaning broadcaster MSNBC, which stated on Monday morning before the press conference that Moreno was “a Hispanic transgender woman”. Both MSNBC and Fox News have now retracted that claim.

Ari Drennen, head of LGBT+ news for the left-wing think tank Media Matters for America, who first noted the NBC News connection, said Ms Raichik and others were “adding fuel to a moral panic as legislators across the country push a raft of laws restricting the lives of trans people”.

It is worth noting that conservatives’ embrace of these debunked claims is part of a growing pattern of blaming LGBT+ people for gun violence in America.

Amid increasing paranoia and violent rhetoric targeting trans people, right-wing activists and influencers have seized on a number of recent shootings in which the alleged perpetrators appeared to be trans or non-binary as evidence that the trans community is uniquely violent.

After the 2023 Nashville shooting, conservative YouTuber Benny Johnson wrote, “The modern trans movement is radicalising activists into terrorists.”

Donald Trump Jr also commented after the Iowa high school shooting last month, stating, “Per capita, is there a more violent group of people anywhere in the world than radicalised trans activists?”

Elon Musk, the owner of X, formerly Twitter, and the richest person in the world, who has become increasingly critical of trans rights since his own child transitioned, said, “This is happening a lot. Something is deeply wrong.”

Some right-wingers, including Republican congressman Paul Gosar, also falsely blamed a random trans woman living in Georgia for the 2022 Uvalde shooting. However, the shooter was actually an 18-year-old male.

According to a Reuters analysis last year, data does not support the idea that trans people commit more mass shootings than others.

In recent years, there have only been four shootings where there was clear evidence that a perpetrator was transgender or considering transition. These incidents occurred in Aberdeen, Maryland, in 2018; Denver, Colorado, in 2019; Nashville, Tennessee, in 2023; and Iowa in January 2024.

The 2022 Colorado Springs shooting at an LGBT+ nightclub has also been listed by conservatives due to the shooter, Anderson Lee Aldrich, stating they identify as non-binary. However, prosecutors have said there is “zero evidence” that they identified that way before the shooting and found that they exhibited “extreme hatred” for LGBT+ people.

It is crucial to note that, out of over 4,400 mass shootings listed by the Gun Violence Archive since 2013, less than ten were known to be perpetrated by transgender individuals as of last March. This accounts for only 0.11% of all mass shootings.

A US Secret Service analysis of 173 mass casualty attacks estimated that 2% of perpetrators were trans men, while around 96% were cisgender men.

The exact number of trans people in the US is uncertain, with estimates commonly clustering around 0.5 to 0.6%.