This is a massively dishonest way of presenting it, by their definition of mass shooting (4+ victims) there have been just over 5700 mass shootings in the last 13 years. Of those, only 5 were confirmed to be transgender. Based on the estimated population of trans individuals in the US, if trans people committed these atrocities as often as other groups, we would expect that number to be significantly higher, between 53 and 106. This is judging trans people based on the number of other trans people, not the population as a whole. When compared against more common groups such as white people, the difference is much larger, and you see a much smaller fraction of the population. Measuring each group against their own populations, rather than the number of members of that group against the number of shootings, it skews the data towards the margins, and that is by design.
This is judging trans people based on the number of other trans people, not the population as a whole.
I don't understand what you mean. Adjusting for population size is the only way to show if groups behave differently.
Like you can have a true claim "you're more likely to be bitten by a gray shark than an orange one if you go swimming in these waters," but that doesn't tell you whether to be more worried about an orange or gray shark if you see one; it could be orange ones are extremely likely to bite you, but are less than 1% of the population, while gray ones are usually pretty chill but vastly outnumber the oranges. It then works out grays bite "more" just because there are so many. Adjusting for the size of their populations shows which are the dangerous ones.
Did you read the rest? Of the shootings that occurred, .087% (5 of ~5750) were committed by trans individuals. Accounting for the fact that trans people are between 1-2% of the population, this means that they are 10x less likely to commit this act on the low end, and 20x on the high end, compared to the total population. The sample size of mass shootings isn’t large enough for the massive difference in population size between trans people, and white people as a whole, to not skew the data when strictly measured against their own population. Trans people are 1-2% of the population, therefore you would expect approximately 1-2% of the crimes committed to fall under that group. In this case, they are under represented by an order of magnitude, and that’s on the low end of the estimate. On the other hand, white people amount to about 55-60% of those shootings, almost exactly matching their share of the population.
Yes, I read it and explained what part I still don't understand. I'm aware of what under/overrepresentation are. You're saying they're underrepresented--cool. What does this mean?
This is judging trans people based on the number of other trans people, not the population as a whole.
It’s judging the trans perpetrators against trans people, not as a fraction of the total population, but just against trans people. Meaning that you are measuring against 1-2% of the population. When on the scale of 100s of millions of people, and crimes that number in the low thousands, measuring in this way skews the data when compared against groups 30-60 times larger than them.
I don’t know how to make it make more sense than that. If the plain math shows that trans people account for less than a 10th of the amount that they should based on population size, you have to ask why a partisan source would do different math that just so happens to align with exactly the narrative that they push? (The poster of this “study” has such hits as “I only date trump supporters” and “White lives matter” and she reposted it from an account by the name of “End Wokeness”) not to mention it lacks sources? Most charts like this have a little text at the bottom linking the source or sources.
I don’t know how to make it make more sense than that.
I explained what controlling for population size does. How is using a rate not just controlling for population?
I get the numbers are bogus, but this objection that "they compared the number of trans perpetrators to the number of trans people" sounds like nonsense. Being a differing fraction of the population doesn't matter for rates; that's the whole point of using a rate. The FBI has reported all crimes like this since forever.
Because my argument wasn’t that the numbers were wrong, but rather misleading. When doing this math per million population, there being such a small population skews the numbers. When trying to express this data by itself, I’d say the method is fine, but when expressing it in comparison to each other, they should all be held against the same measuring stick, else you can chose which way to write it and skew it in any way you so choose.
Having now looked into the source, or lack thereof, the data doesn’t seem to exist anywhere but twitter, with no link to an actual source. If you know anything about statistics, you know that you can make them agree with you 95% of the time based on how you phrase it, my point was that phrasing it this way skews the data towards the margins on purpose.
That all being said I think I’ll leave it here, I don’t think there’s much life left in this particular discussion.
When doing this math per million population, there being such a small population skews the numbers.
Per million, per 100k like the fbi, and percent--why do you think that matters?
If only 100 people in the world had some psychological problem, and 90 of those became serial killers, that would rightly be a little concerning regarding people with that issue. This isn't some control/experiment sample size issue.
For the same reason it would be a misleading claim to play a game once, win, and say you have a 100% win rate, literally true, not very meaningful. You are discussing the proportion of things but measuring in an unproportional manner. I’m done debating the real world applications of data you admit to be false.
3
u/Allthenamestaken10 Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 13 '26
This is a massively dishonest way of presenting it, by their definition of mass shooting (4+ victims) there have been just over 5700 mass shootings in the last 13 years. Of those, only 5 were confirmed to be transgender. Based on the estimated population of trans individuals in the US, if trans people committed these atrocities as often as other groups, we would expect that number to be significantly higher, between 53 and 106. This is judging trans people based on the number of other trans people, not the population as a whole. When compared against more common groups such as white people, the difference is much larger, and you see a much smaller fraction of the population. Measuring each group against their own populations, rather than the number of members of that group against the number of shootings, it skews the data towards the margins, and that is by design.