Transgender homicides in the US have nearly doubled over 4 years: report

The number of homicides of transgender people in the U.S. nearly doubled between 2017 and 2021, mostly driven by gun violence, according to a new report from Everytown for Gun Safety, a national gun control organization.

Known transgender homicides jumped 93 percent over the last four years, from 29 killings in 2017 to 56 in 2021 — and 73 percent involved a firearm, according to an Everytown analysis of data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey published Tuesday. Law enforcement agencies are not required by law to report hate crimes to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The report noted that violence against transgender people, especially gun violence, is concentrated in the Black community, and 73 percent of known transgender homicide victims between 2017 and 2021 were Black women, despite Black people accounting for just 13 percent of the nation’s total transgender population, according to a recent estimate by the Williams Institute.

Over the same four-year period, state lawmakers put forward a record-shattering number of bills seeking to curtail the rights of transgender people — particularly transgender youth — nationwide. By the end of 2021, 10 states had adopted laws barring transgender athletes from participating on school sports teams consistent with their gender identity, for example.

The Human Rights Campaign, a leading LGBTQ advocacy group, last year announced that 2021 had officially become the worst year in recent history for LGBTQ state legislative attacks — it was also the deadliest year on record for transgender and gender-nonconforming people in the U.S.

At the same time, states like Iowa and Arkansas have passed more lenient gun laws, creating “an environment ripe for deadly gun violence fueled by hate,” according to the Everytown report.

Attacks against the transgender community more generally have escalated this year, with conservative commentators and politicians claiming parents and licensed physicians are “grooming” and abusing children by providing youth with gender-affirming health care, like puberty blockers and hormones.

Boston Children’s Hospital, home to the nation’s first pediatric and adolescent transgender health program, was forced into lockdown last month following an anonymous bomb threat. A Massachusetts woman was arrested in connection with the threat, which investigators later determined was a hoax.

Other hospitals across the country have recently faced similar threats, reporting that they have been on the receiving end of harassing emails, phone calls and demonstrations that have caused staff, patients and their families to fear for their safety.

Across different LGBTQ populations, the risk for violence is higher than in heterosexual and cisgender populations, according to the Everytown report. Lesbian and gay people, for instance, are more than twice as likely to experience violent victimization as their straight peers. 

Transgender people are two-and-a-half times as likely as cisgender people to be victims of violence.

The report also notes that firearms are involved in a large number of suicides in the U.S., of which LGBTQ people — especially youth — are disproportionately at risk. A recent report from The Trevor Project, a national LGBTQ youth suicide prevention group, found that 45 percent of LGBTQ 13- to 24-year-olds had seriously considered suicide in the past year, and nearly 20 percent of transgender and nonbinary youth had attempted suicide.

Roughly 40 percent of transgender people in national survey in 2015 reported having attempted suicide in their lifetime, nearly nine times the national average.

“These data imply that this epidemic of firearm suicide could have a disproportionate impact on transgender and adolescent members of the LGBTQ+ community,” the Everytown report states.

The report acknowledges that there is not “single solution” to stopping gun violence in the U.S. but recommends that Congress pass the Disarm Hate Act — federal legislation that would prevent people convicted of violent crimes or hate crimes from acquiring guns.

The federal government should also establish offices of domestic terrorism, according to the report, and lawmakers in all 50 states should adopt extreme risk laws, which would allow law enforcement to petition for the removal of firearms from a person deemed a danger to themselves or others. Extreme risk laws may also block the future purchase of firearms.