Activist Outlet Twists Psychology Study to Dismiss Concerns About Transgender Mass Shootings | The American Spectator

LGBTQ Nation, a “100% LGBTQ+ Owned” news magazine, claims 2025 behavioral questionnaire data “debunks a claim made by anti-trans activists related to mass shootings.” 

The LGBTQ Nation article references a study consisting of a small, non-representative population of young biological females receiving testosterone injections. The author argues that evidence of reduced aggression, after a brief period of testosterone use, proves that testosterone does not influence youth to commit mass shootings. The results of the questionnaires do not, however, offer support for any claim about transgender mass shooters. 

The Crime Prevention Research Center found that individuals identifying as transgender accounted for a disproportionately high share of perpetrators in “active shooting attacks.” The research center, which drew from raw FBI crime data, published a Feb. 20 report that stated, “In 2024 transgender individuals committed active shooting attacks at least 12 times their share of the population and possibly more than 16 times their share.” 

The study cited by LGBTQ Nation was a 12-month observational analysis following adolescents beginning testosterone therapy. Researchers at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago measured 178 “gender-diverse adolescents and young adults’” self-reported anger and irritability scores using behavioral questionnaires. Participants were females, between the ages of 12 and 20, at Tanner stage 5 in puberty, and with no prior use of puberty-blocking medications. 

Researchers found no significant increases in anger, aggression, or related behavioral measures over the 12-month follow-up period, after participants began receiving testosterone injections. Self-reported anger levels were found to be “within normative ranges” and “remained about the same” after 12 months. According to an abstract of the study presented in Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, the data showed “No significant changes were demonstrated across baseline, 6 months, and 12 months for anger (p = .08), aggressive behavior (p = .08), conduct problems (p = .97), oppositional defiant problems (p = .37), or externalizing problems (p = .45).” Therefore, researchers could not conclude that testosterone caused measurable changes in any of these emotion-based scores.

A $10 million study from Children’s Hospital LA previously found no evidence that puberty blockers improved the mental health of children between 8 and 16. Erin Friday, a California attorney and opponent of puberty blockers, refuted the study. She alleged that Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, who led the research, withheld the results because “she was afraid that her findings would be weaponized and used in court and used to prescribing puberty blockers for children.” Friday believed Olson-Kennedy “placed a political agenda above children’s welfare.”

Leor Sapir, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, reinforces that puberty blockers do not help children. He appeared on the Epoch Times’ American Thought Leaders talk show in January, where he stated, “There is no credible evidence that puberty blockers … address anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation.” 

Sapir further explained, “The people who do studies in this area are typically gender clinicians … who believe in it for sometimes very ideological reasons, sometimes financial reasons. Sometimes they just believe that they’re helping kids.” Sapir is the co-author of the 2025 HHS review of pediatric gender medicine.