Republican commentator abhorrently calls for trans people to be ‘locked away and studied’

A right-wing commentator, Joey Mannarino, has said that trans people should to be “locked away and studied” in the wake of a mass shooting in Minneapolis that killed two children and injured 18 others.

The shooting took place on Wednesday morning (27 August) at the Church of the Annunciation in the Windom neighbourhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota as a school-wide mass was taking place for pupils and staff of Annunciation Catholic School.

The shooter, 23-year-old Robin Westman, who is believed to have been transgender, died at the scene from a self-inflicted shotgun wound and their motive is currently under investigation by the authorities.

The FBI is investigating the shooting “as an act of domestic terrorism and hate crime targeting Catholics”.

Following the tragedy, far-right figures have use the shooting to push the conservative conspiracy theory that trans people in the US, who make up around 0.6 per cent of the population, commit violent crime at a higher rate than the general population – which has frequently been disproven.

On Wednesday evening (27 August) Joey Mannarino, whose bio on X describes him as a “political strategist and commentator working with conservative movements/candidates in the US & EU”, wrote in response to the shooting that trans people should be detained as “a matter of national security”.

He said the health and human services department – headed up by Trump ally RFK Jr – should immediately “violate the HIPAA laws” and “forward every transgender and transgender-questioning person to local law enforcement for IMMEDIATE detainment until we can figure out why they keep killing children in schools”.

“They must be locked away and studied,” he wrote.

“Anyone enabling their transitions should be immediately expelled from the medical profession. This needs to be handled by the federal government with no mercy. They need to be treated as we treat terror organisations.”

Health and Human Services must immediately get involved and violate the HIPAA laws to forward every transgender and transgender-questioning person to local law enforcement for IMMEDIATE detainment until we can figure out why they keep killing children in schools.

This is a…

— Joey Mannarino 🇺🇸 (@JoeyMannarinoUS) August 27, 2025

This was not the only statement Joey Mannarino made on the matter, publishing around a dozen subsequent posts in which he said the US “[does not] need gun control. We need transgender control”, he would be “fine with taking away the Second Amendment rights for anyone who is a transgender” and described being trans as a “dangerous mental illness” and “sickness”.

“There is no excuse for a transgender individual to be walking among the general population after their many instances of unprovoked violence against children,” he wrote, without any evidence to back up his claim.

In a further post, he said: “We must gather lawmakers to immediately classify transgenderism as a mental illness that must be treated in an inpatient mental health facility.

“Anyone who prescribes puberty blockers should immediately lose their medical license.

“Anyone who performs surgeries to transition individuals must be immediately jailed for a minimum of ten years.

“Transgenders cannot coexist in polite society any longer.”

97 per cent of US mass shootings are carried out by cis men, not trans people

The conspiracy theory that trans people are more violent than the general population and are responsible for the majority of mass shootings in the US has gained traction in recent years as transphobic rhetoric increased in the states, pushing by numerous right-wing figures with large followings on social media.

For example, in June, Trump Jr claimed, without substantiation, that the so-called “radical transgender movement” is “per capita the most violent domestic terror threat in America, probably the entire world” after Vance Boelter, a non-trans Evangelical Christian, was arrested following a two-day manhunt for allegedly murdering a Democrat politician and her husband.

Research from The Violence Project database of mass shootings, which uses data from the more than 190 mass shootings reported since 1966, states cis men make up 97 per cent of mass public shooters.

“So with 0.6 per cent of the population, transgender people would expect to be involved in about one shooting,” an analysis by Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler reported in March 2023.

Further to this, by the Gun Violence Archive’s set of criteria – which counts a mass shooting if it involves a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including the shooter – states that trans people “would be expected to have committed at least 16 mass shootings since 2018”.

“Instead there are just three possible cases cited by conservatives,” Kessler wrote at the time.

Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey has urged “humanity” in the wake of the shooting.

As reported by NBC News, Frey stressed at a news conference: “I have heard about a whole lot of hate that’s being directed at our trans community.

“Anybody who is using this … as an opportunity to villainise our trans community, or any other community out there, has lost their sense of common humanity.”