The July 4th holiday has consistently seen mass shootings over the last near-decade and this year was no different: Between 5 p.m. ET Friday, June 30, and 5 a.m. ET July 5, there were 22 mass shootings in the US, with 20 people killed and 126 injured, according to the Gun Violence Archive tracker. There were shootings in 17 states and the District of Columbia. Per the Guardian, Texas and Maryland saw two mass shootings each, which the tracker defines as “a single event with four or more victims either injured or killed,” according to ABC News.
One of those incidents, in Philadelphia, is being politicized by the right to launder anti-trans and anti-Black Lives Matter sentiment. On the night of July 3, 40-year-old Kimbrady Carriker, heavily armed with an AR-15-style rifle and additional weapons and wearing a bulletproof vest, “seemingly [fired] at least 50 shots randomly at victims,” per ABC, killing five, including a 15-year-old, and injuring others.
In a recent op-ed for Teen Vogue on July 3, Illinois governor JB Pritzker and Angela Ferrell-Zabala, the executive director of Moms Demand Action, noted the one-year anniversary of the mass shooting in Highland Park, emphasizing that that shooting as well as many others, like the Uvalde massacre in Texas, were carried out with semiautomatic assault weapons.
Soon after the news from Philadelphia broke, conservatives including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene baselessly claimed that Carriker was trans, with Greene and others making incorrect extrapolations from his social media posts. Greene wrote “another trans shooter,” presumably in reference to the Covenant shooting in Nashville, which was another mass shooting used by conservatives to drum up anti-trans sentiment and create a manufactured link between gun violence and trans people. In addition to the transphobia, right-wingers like Ben Shapiro zeroed in on other posts that suggested Carriker supported Black Lives Matter. In fact, many outlets reported that Carriker was a Trump supporter and anti-gun control.
The Daily Beast wrote that Asa Khalif of the Philadelphia district attorney’s LGBTQIA advisory committee used a Wednesday press conference to criticize the false narrative being spread, stating, “The language that is spewed out by the conservative press is violent and is dangerous and is targeting trans women of color.” Khalif stated that Carriker identified as male and added that, in spite of right-wing messaging that is attempting to demonize the community, trans people are “the most vulnerable to violence.”
“We will not allow conservative bigots to use that type of language to attack trans people,” Khalif continued. “This is about someone who used violence to hurt and harm our city and our community, and I’m sure they will be punished to the fullest extent of the law. But we will not allow trans women, and particularly trans women of color, to be the scapegoats of bigots.”
Unsurprisingly, the right-wing discourse cherry-picked from Carriker’s social media posts, ignoring ones where he praised Tucker Carlson, complained about liberals' stance on guns, and bragged about gun purchases, and that reports reporting from the Philadelphia Inquirer quoted a relative of Carriker’s, who called him a “biblical extremist.”
In a recent conversation with Teen Vogue about Tennessee’s anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-drag policies, Tennessee musician Julien Baker of Boygenius weighed in on the false narratives around the Covenant shooting: “Where are we making it attached to someone's identity in any other instance like this? Like with the thousands of cis-het white guys who are shooting up movie theaters and schools, shooting up gay bars or mosques? Where is the ‘identity’ in that?” Bandmate Lucy Dacus agreed, asking if those who claimed they were “protecting children” by targeting queer and trans folks were equally as concerned about gun control given that gun violence is the biggest killer of children in the US and, as Baker said, the overwhelming majority of mass shootings are committed by cis men.
Stay up-to-date with the politics team. Sign up for the Teen Vogue Take
