Two mass casualty attacks in days. Two perpetrators with documented psychological instability. Two digital trails filled with grievance, fixation, and escalating rhetoric.
These are facts. Not speculation. Not commentary. Facts.
On Monday night in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, 56-year-old Robert Dorgan — who also went by Roberta Esposito — entered a high school hockey arena and opened fire on his estranged family. He shot his ex-wife. He shot his children. He shot a family friend. His ex-wife died at the scene. One child later died at the hospital. Three others remain in critical condition. He then killed himself.
Court documents in the couple’s divorce described Dorgan as exhibiting “narcissistic and personality disorder traits.” Family members described him as “very sick,” saying his gender dysphoria was only one aspect of his mental health problems. The night before the attack, he posted an online rant to Alex Jones’ website defending transgender politics and warning critics not to “wonder why we go BERSERK.”
That language now reads less like bluster and more like a pre-incident behavioral indicator.
This shooting follows a similar one days earlier on Valentine’s Day in British Columbia, Canada. There 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar murdered eight people, including his own mother and 11-year-old half-brother, before taking his own life. Police confirmed Van Rootselaar was living as a woman, had been transitioning and identified as female. The shooter was described as deeply immersed in violent online content, frequenting websites dedicated to graphic death videos, gore, and mass-casualty footage.
The pattern is staring us in the face. While the media wants to focus on the fact both individuals were obsessed with violence that ignores the other obvious connection.
Gender dysphoria was also a factor in the mass shooting Natalie Rupnow performed. In December of 2024, Rupnow killed a child and a teacher at her former school, Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin. She also was obsessed with consuming violent online content. She frequented websites like “Watch People Die,” which is exactly what it sounds like.
The pattern repeats itself again with transgender killer Robin Westman, who left messages on bullets (“Kill Donald Trump”, “Jew Gas,” “6 Million Wasn’t Enough,” and “For the Children”), before he shot up a Catholic Church in in Minneapolis. Westman was able to kill two students and wound 18 others who were attending mass that day. Westman identified and dressed like a woman and wrote about identity anguish. “I am tried of being trans,” and “I wish I never brainwashed myself,” he wrote.
Gender dysphoria is obvious in all of these cases as is an obsession with consuming violent content and mental health struggles. Yet media coverage routinely sanitizes or sidelines these elements. Identity details are either framed exclusively as political flashpoints or omitted altogether. Online behavioral patterns are mentioned briefly, then dropped. Documented psychological instability becomes a footnote.
Why?
Because institutions fear being accused of stigmatizing marginalized groups. Because newsroom culture treats certain variables as untouchable. Because raising uncomfortable questions invites backlash.
But ignoring patterns does not eliminate them. It conceals them.
No serious public safety analysis would dismiss recurring behavioral markers simply because they are socially sensitive. If perpetrators repeatedly exhibit untreated mental illness, escalating grievance rhetoric, online immersion in violent ecosystems, and intense identity-related distress, those correlations demand examination — not silence.
The majority of people suffering from transgenderism or mental health challenges are not violent. That is true. It is also true that violent offenders often display overlapping psychological risk factors long before they act.
Both statements can coexist. But struggling with gender identity and living as a transgender person has become a warning sign that can no longer be denied. This is not an emerging pattern, this is a clear pattern that has not gone away over the last decade, in fact it’s only gotten more obvious.
When the media and the left refuse to admit the obvious warning signs for fear of offense, they undermine public trust. More importantly, they miss opportunities for early intervention.
Public safety depends on pattern recognition. It depends on the willingness to analyze uncomfortable data. It depends on acknowledging that online radicalization, untreated severe mental illness, and grievance-fueled identity crises can form a combustible mix.
Pretending those elements are politically radioactive does not protect vulnerable communities. It protects narratives.
And narratives do not stop bullets.
If we want fewer headlines like Rhode Island and British Columbia, we need less selective reporting and more rigorous analysis. The question is not whether discussing patterns is uncomfortable.
The question is whether failing to discuss them makes the next tragedy more likely.
That is a conversation worth having — openly, honestly, and without fear.
