The shooter constantly talked about looking out for other people with guns, thinking that some "old fart" may be armed, and in previous plans about a music venue, being convinced that a lot of "trans girls" may be armed. (I assume it's a popular venue in the trans community?)
Trans people, like any other minority demographic, have a complicated and loud dialogue about the role of firearm ownership. Some know they are able to use them responsibly. Some know they aren’t ok with having them at home. Some of us are just as irresponsible about owning them as others.
But this shooter should best be characterized as a 4chan regular and alt-right chud, their gender transition and apparent detransition shaped their perspective far less than their social circle of sociopathic malcontents.
Why is this 50x more than we know about the alleged Butler, PA shooter, Crooks?
1) The Minnesota shooter filmed 250+ pages of their diary and posted it online. Crooks did not. 2) We do know a decent amount about Crooks: www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/u...
A fair point about easy access to online data. Still, the lack of official disclosure about Crooks is peculiar.
It's not a disclosure issue. There just isn't as much out there. Crooks used a VPN, was careful, etc. The MN shooter literally posted a 250+ page hand-written diary in a 20-minute YouTube video. The two couldn't be any different with how they operated.
I get that. I'm a little more willing to believe he covered his tracks well based on his SAT score - clearly bright - but I also know the kind of forensics that can be performed (in cases like this) and we sure haven't heard what that revealed. Hell, we don't even have a medical report on the ear.
Ie there is definitely a disclosure issue
Oh, that's an important part of what happened. Thank you so much! Can you share what page that was on and was it one of the original places they planned on targeting?
Are you asking us.
If you’re a reporter, you’d answer your own question
On the music venue: @kylebazgo.bsky.social found it -- it is indeed someone's house where they hold concerts, and is presented as a trans/furry/queer space. (They intentionally withhold the address from being public)
Paging @dogpatch.press
I've been there a few times, its always been a fun and welcoming place, this is terrifying
(The diary explicitly describes dismissing a plan to attack a Trump rally partly because of the prospect of many armed rally participants)
In sum: the church/school were chosen because of an obsession with hurting and killing children (this was extremely disturbing to read in the diary), and it being a soft target compared to a Trump rally or a political assassination (Trump/Musk/Nazis/"execs of greedy megacorps" are mentioned).
Strangely, it's kinda like people who get bullied constantly asking "Why don't they pick on someone their own size!?" Because they specifically chose you, knowing most likely you won't be able to fight back. Bullies (and here specifically mass shooters) often go after the most vulnerable targets.
Thank you for reporting out on that. I will never read it. A grab bag of hate. Do you think he may have been trying to write in Nadsat, the slang Burgess invented for the violent, bored teens in A Clockwork Orange
No. The shooter was learning (very basic/elementary) Russian. When I taught first-year Russian, a lot of students did the same thing to practice Cyrillic, and feel cool in writing in a sorta secret language. That part didn't really feel odd to me, it was just obnoxious to read.
Ha, okay yes; me too 😬 I did that LOL
High school
Another point that didn't make it into the article, but is fairly obvious, is that the shooter was suicidal, and frequently mentioned wanting to die and while taking out as many people as possible in the process.
On a more boring, technical note, as I like to describe research/reporting methodologies whenever I do a story: I read a big chunk of the diaries just old-school style of taking notes while watching the video with the pages being flipped through. Eventually, I used Google Pinpoint.
I screenshotted every page (this only took like 10-15 minutes with SnagIt), uploaded them to Pinpoint, and it did a good job of OCR-ing the handwritten faux-Russian. I could then do keyword searches in Russian (predicting how it was written) to make sure I didn't miss big topics.
Better approach might be to generate a dictionary from the whole OCRed text. With a word list it will be easier to spot OCR errors, and then you can transliterate the text back to proper English.
Here's what it looks like in Pinpoint with OCR-ed text. You have to read a *lot* of the diary to pick up how vowels in particular are transliterated. For example, highlighted word below is "continuing" I've seen a major outlet mis-"translate" a key word or two in their coverage.
'transliterated'. You are so awesome
@unroll.skywriter.blue
Thank you for your reporting & for sharing your methods. I hope you get a cleanser of some sort this weekend. I think it’s time for the rest of us to face how vulnerable we are and that many (most?) of these events are not preventable unless everyone gets effective therapy, which isn’t happening.
Very weird to see someone writing Cyrillic letters without using any cursive. I guess the shooter thus probably didn't have any real knowledge of Russian?
📌
(An outlet translated "Бэионэта" as "Beyonce". Maybe they don't play enough video games to know the reference.)
it's the New York Post, in case anyone was wondering.
How is that transliteration supposed to make sense? The letter "э" represents a sound similar to the e at the beginning of "end"
Tbh not a lot of it does.
You're giving it more thought that the shooter did
If the shooter is using эи for long ā, that's reasonable (although эй would be better in my opinion). But the other outlet seems to have transcribed ‘beyon’ (intending a short ĕ) and then given up.
I hate this immensely, Aric.
I don't play video games. What is the reference here?
bayonetta - video game
This reinforces my take on Bayonetta
I don’t know the game and can only remember about 2/3 of Cyrillic letters and that was my guess too, how the hell do you get “Beyoncé” from it??
Ah thankyou. That makes the Beyonce thing much funnier.
Not trying to start anything, just asking sincerely why trans girls are in quotes here?
And old fart too.
Also trying to start something.
*not
*anything
Its a direct quote. E.g., "trans girls" is quoted to point out the shooter was concerned specifically with transfem folks, and used exactly those words.
To me it's a common enough phrase to not need quotes while paraphrasing.
Unless you feel it is appropriate to call adult women "girls" or older people "old farts", the quotes are correct.
Direction quotation from what they said, though I probably should have put armed in quotes too. Full sentence here: "But this might be a 'so radically left they went right' kinda place and there might be armed trans girls."
Thank you! Also thank you for not overreacting :) I can confirm that there are many more armed trans women out there than you would think.
Yep it's surprisingly common compared to expectations for anybody not familiar