Nashville Shooting & Transgenderism: Humanizing Mass Killers to Vindicate Progressivism

The trauma of mass gun violence — at least in places where mass gun violence has not become a terrible feature of daily life — is compounded today by the perfunctory ritual through which the arbiters of American discourse drag the rest of the country.

There are the reflexive calls for stricter gun-control laws without any understanding of whether those proposals would have had any effect on the course of the events that inspired them (and sometimes in the face of evidence that they would have no effect). There’s the mockery of the religiously observant from great institutional heights. And there’s the effort to tether, however tenuously, the shooter to Republican rhetoric or a right-wing aesthetic.

About the Author

Noah Rothman

Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review. His third book, Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence, was published by Hachette in May 2026.

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The trauma of mass gun violence — at least in places where mass gun violence has not become a terrible feature of daily life — is compounded today by the perfunctory ritual through which the arbiters of American discourse drag the rest of the country.

There are the reflexive calls for stricter gun-control laws without any understanding of whether those proposals would have had any effect on the course of the events that inspired them (and sometimes in the face of evidence that they would have no effect). There’s the mockery of the religiously observant from great institutional heights. And there’s the effort to tether, however tenuously, the shooter to Republican rhetoric or a right-wing aesthetic.

About the Author

Noah Rothman

Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review. His third book, Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence, was published by Hachette in May 2026.