MSNBC’s Velshi: Focusing on Nashville Shooter’s Trans Identity ‘Uniquely Dangerous’ — Trans People ‘More Likely to Experience Violence’

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Alex Wagner Tonight,” guest host Ali Velshi argued that because “Trans people are already more likely to experience violence simply because they are trans people,” focusing on the transgender identity of the Nashville school shooter “is uniquely dangerous, and we have to respond to that” “awful” “distraction” from pushes for more gun control in the United States.

Velshi said, “Sometimes the Republican distraction is so awful, you actually do have to comment on it, and unfortunately, that’s the case today.”

After referencing some examples of people on the right pointing to the shooter’s identity, he added that people on the right want to focus on the Nashville shooter’s identity, “something conservatives don’t seem overly concerned about when the shooter is a white man, which is often. Trans people are already more likely to experience violence simply because they are trans people, so the right focusing on that is uniquely dangerous, and we have to respond to that. But it is also a distraction because there are plenty of trans people in plenty of countries all over the world. But, once again, America is the only nation where shootings like this happen over and over again.”

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