A trans-identified male who brandished a gun on social media and caused outrage following a school massacre in Nashville, Tennessee has been fired from his job with the federal government.
On March 29, transgender Twitter user Kayla Denker went viral after posting a short video showing himself loading an assault rifle and posing with it menacingly. The clip, which was initially uploaded earlier in the month, was captioned: “While advocating for trans people to ‘arm ourselves’ is not any kind of a solution to the genocide we are facing, I do want to say that if any of you transphobes do try to come for me I am taking a few of you with me.”
Denker’s video began circulating widely just days after a horrific mass shooting at The Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee. The shooting, perpetrated by a female who identified as transgender, left 6 people dead — three young children, and three school employees. The shooter was neutralized at the scene.
Despite the fact that non-transgender people had been targeted in the massacre, many trans activists took to social media to complain that the shooting was going to result in an uptick in violence against trans people. As a result, many activists called for the arming of trans people, claiming they were facing an impending genocide.
A “direct action” event which called itself the “Trans Day of Vengeance” was also planned for April 1, with a call for trans people to gather in Washington, D.C., but was cancelled after organizers complained that the risks of the event moving forward in wake of the shooting were too high.
Posters related to the event were censored by Twitter, and users who circulated the graphic, even just for commentary, found their accounts locked rapidly. In a statement on the matter, Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, wrote that the company perceived the graphic as “inciting violence,” adding: “‘Vengeance’ does not imply peaceful protest. Organizing or support for peaceful protests is ok.”
Following the shooting, Denker’s video was met with overwhelming backlash. The video garnered attention from Newsweek and The Daily Mail, and the latter outlet revealed that Denker was reportedly a former U.S. Army soldier.
Known previously as Adam, Denker had once created “educational” videos for YouTube teaching his audience about assault rifles, ammunition, and more.
Denker put his Twitter account on private after being inundated with negative attention, but created a public account in an effort to inform people he had posted his gun-toting video prior to the shooting in Nashville, and to claim he never intended to threaten anyone despite the caption affixed to the video.
On April 14, Denker tweeted that he had been fired from his job with the U.S. Forest Service in Colorado as a result of the attention his video had gotten from mainstream media outlets. In his tweet, Denker says: “I was fired by the Biden administration for being a trans woman that owns a gun.”
The U.S. Forest Service is an agency of the Department of Agriculture, and provides oversight and administration for the country’s national forests and grasslands.
In another tweet, Denker accuses an employee “fairly high up in the Department of Agriculture” as being responsible for his termination, and stated his immediate manager was sympathetic and had tried to stop the dismissal.
Denker quickly launched a GoFundMe requesting $5,000 in financial assistance to “survive.” The fundraiser currently sits at $4,600 at the time of this writing.
Denker supplemented his claims of having been terminated by uploading a scanned copy of the letter from his employer detailing the reasons behind their action. While Denker censored all of his personal information, he left the name of the member of the public who reported him uncensored in the letter. It is unclear why Denker was provided the personal information of the woman who reported him.
The letter reads: “On March 29, 2023, a member of the public, identified as [name redacted by Reduxx], contacted management about the concern you, as an employee of the Forest Service, were advocating violence. They identified in a post online that you were employed with the Forest Service in Denver, Colorado.”
The letter reveals that Denker had been employed as a trainee archeologist in the Rocky Mountain Region, and that his employers had learned he was prominently displaying that information on social media.
“On March 29, 2023, District Ranger [redacted] called you after he viewed the DailyMail.com article. You indicated that you previously posted the video but that it was not supposed to be shared, and it was taken out of context. On March 31, 2023, you further explained the video was posted on March 5, 2023, and had nothing to do with any movement or ‘day of vengeance.’ Instead, you said you made the video because you were receiving death threats and you were trying to discourage people from acting on those threats. You explained that you were not threatening to shoot anyone,” the letter reads.
“I find your post inappropriate because it included you with a gun and implying you would use it under a certain circumstance. While I understand you said you made this in response to death threats, this type of post is not appropriate under any circumstance. More aggravating, you were identified as a Forest Service employee, and this does not demonstrate the elevated ethical standards you are required to adhere to as a federal employee.”
On the second page of the letter, Denker was invited to file an appeal if he felt he was being discriminated against.
On his public Twitter account, Denker maintains he did nothing wrong and was targeted because of his transgender identity.
“I worked for the government. The government punishing you because it doesn’t like what you said or because they don’t like you having guns is literally what a violation of your 1st and 2nd amendment rights is,” Denker wrote in response to someone criticizing his behavior.
The investigation into the shooting in Nashville, Tennessee remains ongoing, but officials have yet to release any clear motive for the actions of the transgender shooter or details from the “manifesto” police located.
Just days after the school massacre, another transgender individual was arrested in Colorado on suspicions he had been planning to target multiple schools in a mass shooting spree.
As previously reported by Reduxx, William Whitworth, 19, was arrested on March 31 on charges that included suspicion of attempted first-degree murder after he admitted to planning to commit shootings at schools in the Colorado Springs area. Whitworth was born male but uses “she/her” pronouns and refers to himself as “Lilly” or “Lily.”
Whitworth was reported by his sister, to whom he had been claiming he was planning on executing his plans. When police arrived to his residence, they found Whitworth drunk in his room, which was littered with filth. The house was in extreme disrepair, and deputies noted that “there was trash piled up all around the house to where it made it hard to walk inside.”
Amongst Whitworth’s belongings was a whiteboard with a floor plan to Timberview Middle School, which he described as a “main target,” but Prairie Hills Elementary and Pine Creek High School were reportedly also listed as “targets” in one of Whitworth’s other notebooks. He was in possession of a “detailed” hit list of people he was planning to murder.
Whitworth also told police that churches were among his other “targets.”
Whitworth is expected in court on May 5.
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