Murder in a Dress

Marc Dion
Thu, 19 Feb 2026 21:00:00 -0800
Opinion

A recent mass shooting at an ice rink in Rhode Island sent us on the hunt.

When someone commits a mass shooting, people of the most extreme political genders set out to find reasons why that would bolster their own beliefs.

What you want to look for is a sexual identity that differs from yours, Nazi sympathies, membership in cultlike versions of Christianity, a big liking for guns of all kinds, maybe the usual impossible-to-understand "manifesto" published in some greasy corner of the internet.
Updated: Fri Feb 20, 2026

A recent mass shooting at an ice rink in Rhode Island sent us on the hunt.

When someone commits a mass shooting, people of the most extreme political genders set out to find reasons why that would bolster their own beliefs.

What you want to look for is a sexual identity that differs from yours, Nazi sympathies, membership in cultlike versions of Christianity, a big liking for guns of all kinds, maybe the usual impossible-to-understand "manifesto" published in some greasy corner of the internet.

Some things it doesn't do any good to discover. If the mass shooter was a committed bowler, or really enjoyed bass fishing it's not going to advance anyone's cause much.

The Rhode Island one was easy, which is good because a lot of people don't like to think too much.

The person who did the shooting was transgender, which means that after getting married and procreating, he decided, or finally realized, that he'd been a woman all along, and started acting like one.

This, to numerous right-wingers, traditional Americans, and Christians, says that when a he becomes a she, it indicates a dangerous level of insanity that will sooner or later turn into gunfire.

It's inevitable.

Of course, what we really know about mass killers is that they are overwhelming male and white, and they nearly all use a gun.

This, of course, proves nothing because it means that you and your shooting range buddy Dale may, in fact, be more likely to commit a mass shooting than almost any kind of homosexual, transgender or transsexual person.

Statistically, Dale might be less dangerous if he changed his name to Dolly, got a big blonde wig and started singing "I Will Always Love You" at the American Legion's karaoke night.

Still, if you're a Christian, patriotic, Trump American, right now you're out on the dance floor doing the dirty boogie because the Rhode Island shooter turned out to be a guy whose commitment to femininity went far beyond just wearing a pink polo shirt.

A lot of people simply don't believe that a man can be anything other than a man, no matter what kind of underwear he's wearing.

To those folks, exterior plumbing is everything, and even if you call yourself "transgender" or "transsexual," you're not either one of those things. What you are is a man in a dress. If you have surgery to make yourself female, you're a mutilated man in a dress.

Unfortunately for some, that means the stiletto-wearing Rhode Island killer wasn't transgender or transsexual because those things don't exist.

He was a white man with a gun, is what he was, like almost all of them are. The logic is so circular, you could wear it as a wedding ring.

I'm a man. I'm white, pure Northern European. I'm a fairly good shot.

I'm the guy. I don't need a miniskirt to go on a shooting rampage. It's built into me. If I develop some kind of mental problem, I'm far more likely to work it out by killing my wife, my kid or a bunch of strangers than is anyone who is transanything.

That's not a theory. That's numbers, and those numbers can be found in the murder statistics of every police department in the country, and I dealt with those numbers for 40 years as a reporter.

And I don't know why we're that way. Nature? Nurture? Testosterone? Video games?

And we're beautiful as men when we put ourselves in front of someone or something to save a life. It's brave, and it's intensely, triumphantly male.

In the Rhode Island ice rink shooting, it was a white man without a gun who came out of the crowd and grabbed the white man with the gun.

We can't always fix our own problems, but there is an old, sweet song of manhood that can sometimes be heard in our worst moments. I believe you could sing it in a dress if that's what you were wearing.

To find out more about Marc Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.