On the menu today: Another horrific mass shooting, in Pawtucket, R.I., this time 15 minutes away from Brown University, the site of a mass shooting in December. (Apparently that shooter left a video confession making clear he had planned his attack for months and insisting his victims deserved their deaths.) This time, the site was a high school hockey game, and the police from the get-go announced that the gunman’s legal name was male . . . but he also went by a female name. And that fact opens up a frustratingly familiar can of worms. Read on.
Daughter of Providence Hockey Game Shooter: ‘He Shot My Family. And He’s Dead Now.’
Families attending a high school hockey game in Pawtucket, R.I., Monday witnessed utter horror as a gunman fired 14 shots, killing two people and leaving another three people in critical condition, before apparently turning the gun on himself.
From the write-up of the Providence Journal:
Two people were killed by a lone gunman in a shooting at the Dennis M. Lynch Arena, a local skating rink in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and three others are in critical condition.
Pawtucket Police Chief Tina Goncalves confirmed that the shooter, identified as Robert Dorgan, who also went by the name Roberta Esposito, appears to have died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
During the press conference, Goncalves told reporters, “It appears that this was a targeted event, that it may be a family dispute.” She credited a good Samaritan who intervened and attempted to subdue the suspect, saying that man’s actions led to a “swift end to this tragic event.”
On Tuesday morning, Gene Valicenti, a reporter with the local NBC affiliate, reported that one of the dead was the suspect’s son. Sources confirmed to NBC 10 News that the suspected shooter was a father of a North Providence senior who was playing in the game at the arena.
An adult woman holding the hand of a small child exited the Pawtucket police headquarters and had a brief exchange with reporters without giving her name:
Woman: My father was the shooter.
Reporter: What happened?
Woman: He shot my family. And he’s dead now.
Reporter voice-over: This woman leaving the police station, speaking with reporters, saying her father was the one who opened fire inside of the hockey rink.
Woman: He has mental health issues.
Reporter: Any idea why he would have done this?
Woman: He’s sick. He’s very sick.
Later in the report, the woman says, “He was just very sick. If you have a loved one who you think is sick, trust your gut.”
A lot of people will notice that the gunman legally had a masculine name and went by a feminine name, and will wonder if he was transsexual or was on some sort of medication designed to alter his hormones. (I’m using that terminology rather than the mainstream media’s preferred “gender-affirming care” because many would argue it is gender-altering care.)
I notice that the Associated Press article on the shooting does not use any gender pronouns and uses the term “shooter” instead of “gunman.” The ABC affiliate in Boston used the words, “police say a gunman shot five, killing two, before turning the gun on himself.” If you kill people, I don’t think the media or anyone else should lose much sleep about not using your preferred pronouns; nobody should worry about “deadnaming” when we’re literally naming the dead.
Last week, a transgender shooter killed six people and then himself at the Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia, Canada, after killing two family members at a nearby residence. In August 2025, a man identifying as a woman killed two children and shot and wounded 30 others at a Mass attended by Catholic school children. In March 2023 in Nashville, a woman identifying as a man killed three nine‑year‑old children and three adults before being shot and killed by police.
It is natural to wonder whether some people who are on medication designed to alter their hormones are having some sort of extreme reaction, leading to psychotic episodes. Or perhaps it goes in the other direction — people with preexisting serious psychological issues making them prone to lashing out in violence are more likely to be interested in changing their gender identity.
The reaction from some corners is to insist that a transgender mass shooter is rare; as of September 2025, the Gun Violence Archive contended that in their records, there were only five transgender mass shooters.
The thing is, mass shooters are rare, and transgender individuals are rare, too. The Williams Institute of the UCLA School of Law published a report in 2025 contending, “Among U.S. adults, 0.8 percent (over 2.1 million people) identify as transgender. Among youth aged 13 to 17 in the U.S., 3.3 percent (about 724,000 youth) identify as transgender.” Combining any two rare traits is going to give you a particularly small group. And our objective here is to get to as few mass shooting events as possible, not to prove that one group are better or worse human beings than another.
Let’s also point out that a significant minority of those taking gender-altering hormones are doing so without a prescription, which makes it likely they’re not being supervised by a doctor. From a 2020 report in the Annals of Family Medicine:
Overall, we found a high rate of nonprescription hormone use — 9.17 percent of current hormone users, translating to approximately 75,000 people based on 2014 estimates of the US transgender population. Although we have no data regarding the reasons for use of nonprescription hormones, this practice enables people to bypass the clinician, thus avoiding any potential discrimination, maltreatment, or exposure, as well as the cost associated with obtaining and filling the prescription.
Hormones accessed from an unlicensed source may be unmonitored for content and quality, and may differ in formulation and dose from those recommended. For example, transgender women who use estrogens prescribed to cisgender women may be at increased risk for thromboembolic complications when using ethinyl estradiol instead of the recommended 17β-estradiol. Additionally, use of nonprescription hormones likely entails decreased monitoring of hormone levels and less opportunity for mitigating risks or other forms of harm reduction, preventive care, and health improvement.
In just about any other circumstance, doctors are wary at best about patients “self medicating,” even with a common substance like sugary food. But that Annals of Family Medicine report concluded, “Despite these risks, use of nonprescription hormones might also be interpreted as an expression of resilience and strength among transgender people.” Indeed, I like to think of my bourbon consumption as “an expression of resilience and strength” as well.
Does this mean anyone on hormone-altering medication is a potential mass shooter? No, of course not. Apparently, 14 percent of American men under age 40 are using or have previously used testosterone replacement therapy. As of 2024, about 5 percent of American women are using menopausal hormone therapy. About 11 percent of American women are using “the pill,” or hormonal birth control. And lots of prescription medications affect a patient’s hormone levels, from corticosteroids to antidepressants to diabetes and blood pressure medications. Altering one’s hormonal balance, by itself, does not make a person a risk to others.
But we also know the profile of most mass shooters. They’re most often men or teenage boys. Seventy percent of school shooters have some childhood trauma, such as abuse or neglect. More than 80 percent show signs like depression, mood swings, agitation, isolation, or trouble with daily tasks before they attack. Most mass shooters target places they know well — schools, workplaces, or other familiar settings — because they have a personal connection and personal grievance. They have frequently had some sort of emotional crisis before their rampages — breakups, firings, etc.
Now, take an individual who meets some of those criteria, and then give them hormones that will dramatically alter their body chemistry. From the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine:
During gender-affirming hormone therapy, you will go through what is called a “second puberty.” This means that the same emotional struggles that your first puberty may have brought — mood swings, anxiety and depression — are possibilities as an adult during your second puberty. It is important to discuss your mental health with your doctor so that they can best support you. Also, having a community of support through family, friends or individuals with similar experiences will help. You can see if there are resources available in your city or town, or online, that connect you with people also going through GAHT.
Your mileage may vary, but a lot of us adults would not voluntarily sign on for another round of voice changes, acne, awkwardness, and everything else that comes with puberty.
As with every other mass shooting, the events in Providence will likely spur another call for gun control. We don’t know how this shooter obtained his firearm, but Rhode Island has tough gun control laws. Canada has tough gun control laws. Minnesota has tough gun control laws. Tough gun control laws are not, by themselves, sufficient to stop mass shootings. So now the question is: What can we determine about what’s going on inside the heads of the shooters themselves, before they pull the trigger?
ADDENDA: Rest in peace, Jesse Jackson. Here’s when he put his sterling orator skills to work reading Green Eggs and Ham by Doctor Seuss on Saturday Night Live in 1991.
. . . Over in that other Washington publication, I write:
This was a yes-or-no question, and Ocasio-Cortez did not answer it. There’s been a lot of speculation about the congresswoman running for president in 2028. The question of what the United States should do if China invades Taiwan is probably one of the biggest and most consequential problems facing the next president — assuming, of course, that China doesn’t invade before Donald Trump’s second term ends. If Ocasio-Cortez has put any thought into this foreign policy challenge, she hid it well in Munich.
As you would imagine, the AOC fans in the comments section over there just loved my critique.