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Saturday, February 21, 2026

More Evidence Fact-Checkers Are Statistically Ignorant

 2/20/26 Crime Prevention Research Center:

A widely cited February 2024 report by Politifact claimed: “No evidence of rising LGBTQ+ violent extremism or ‘trans terrorism.” A follow report by them in September 2025 that examined both the FBI’s definition of active shooting attacks and the notion of mass shootings concluded: “Are trans people ‘statistically’ more prone to commit gun violence? Data shows a different picture.” It looked at the period from 2018 to 2024 that we examine here.

Unfortunately, these and similar claims make a basic error: they look only at the share of attacks committed by transgender individuals and fail to adjust for transgender individuals’ share of the population. That is an obvious statistical mistake. If a group makes up just 1 percent of the population but commits 10 percent of the attacks, no one would dismiss that disparity simply because the group accounts for “only” 10 percent of active shooting attacks.

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