A California-based transgender rights group, the Trans Radical Action Network, is planning a “Trans Day of Vengeance” protest outside the Supreme Court on Saturday, just days after a transgender person killed three children and three adults at a Christian school in Nashville.

Despite the terrible optics and uproar over the rally, the group appears to be moving forward with the planned event. In a press release on the Trans Radical Action Network website, the group says while they are “horrified at the acts of violence committed at the Covenant school,” they also “reject any connection between that horrific event and ours.”

“The Trans/Non-Binary/Gender Non-Conforming/Intersex communities are facing astronomical amounts of hate from the world,” the group’s website states. “Vengeance means fighting back with vehemence.”

The right isn’t buying it, and neither is Twitter, which has designated the “Trans Day of Vengeance” poster a violation of its community standards. On Tuesday, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene posted screenshots saying her official congressional Twitter account had been suspended for tweeting about the event.

“My official Congressional account was banned for 7 days,” Ms. Greene tweeted. “In the wake of a transgender shooter targeting a Christian school and murdering kids, every American should know the threat of Antifa driven trans-terrorism. Twitter should not whitewash the incitement of politically motivated violence.”

There is no overt connection between Antifa and the Trans Radical Action Network, though the group’s Twitter and other social media accounts were made private amid the controversy, making that determination difficult. The Sun reached out to TRAN’s co-founder, Noah Buchanan, via Instagram but did not get a response.

“We do not support tweets that incite violence irrespective of who posts them,” head of Twitter Trust & Safety, Ella Irwin, tweeted, saying the platform had removed more than 5,000 tweets about the protest. “‘Vengeance’ does not imply peaceful protest.”

The disclosure that the 28-year-old shooter — born female — identified as transgender is sparking heightened rhetoric on both sides of the aisle. The shooter left a manifesto, according to police, but it has yet to be released to the public, so the motivation for the shooting remains unclear. The shooter was a former student of the Christian school.

In the wake of the tragedy, President Biden and the left are calling for an assault weapons ban. The left is also warning that the shooter’s identity could instigate violence against transgender persons.

“Extremists are exploiting the Nashville shooting tragedy to continue dangerous campaigns against transgender people,” the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) tells the Sun in a statement. “If extremist politicians cared about children at all, they’d stop the lying and start banning assault weapons.”

“Regardless of the perpetrator’s identity, it is important to understand that one person’s actions do not reflect an entire community,”  a spokesperson for the National Center for Transgender Equality, Ash Orr, tells the Sun. The organization is also calling for gun control measures. 

Some in the press have also insinuated that there may be a connection between the shooter’s motives and two recently passed laws in Tennessee. One restricts drag performances, and the other prohibits gender-affirming care for minors. Until the manifesto is released, this is all conjecture.

The temperature, though, in this cold cultural civil war is getting hotter. A press secretary for Arizona’s Governor Hobbs, Josselyn Berry, tweeted a screenshot of a woman aiming two pistols with the tagline, “Us when we see transphobes.” She has since resigned.

The right is blaming what it sees as an increasingly militant transgender rights movement. “Yesterday’s massacre did not happen because of lax gun laws,” Tucker Carlson said on Fox News, pointing to other recent shootings, including at Club Q in Colorado, that were committed by LGBTQ persons. “Yesterday’s massacre happened because of a deranged and demonic ideology that is infecting this country with the encouragement of people like Joe Biden.”

Several provocative images of transgender rights activists are being shared on social media to stoke fear of an armed trans rebellion. One shows transgender activists wearing t-shirts with images of long guns and the phrase “trans rights or else.”

In another, a transgender female in a bulletproof vest and pink face mask is standing in front of a transgender pride flag while holding a semi-automatic rifle, with several other guns in holsters at her waist. “Kill christcucks. Behead christcucks,” the tweet, a vulgar reference to Christians, says.

A Libertarian candidate for Senate from Georgia in 2022, Chase Oliver, who forced the Warnock-Walker runoff and is openly gay, Christian, and a staunch defender of Second Amendment rights, tells the Sun he thinks the reaction to these armed transgender memes is overblown. He says conservatives and libertarians wear t-shirts with guns and provocative sayings on them all the time. “It’s not a threat, it’s an acclamation of our right to defend ourselves,” he says.

“The vast majority of trans people are non-violent and non-aggressive. And I would say the same thing about the vast majority of gun owners too,” Mr. Oliver says. He says he conceal carries and that the best way to fight oppression is to be armed, as long as it is for self-defense purposes only. “I do believe sincerely that if you are armed, it’s harder for people to oppress or attack you,” he says.

The right, though, is framing this as a war between transgender activists and Christians. Representatives Mary Miller and Marjorie Taylor Greene sent a letter to the FBI Tuesday pressing the bureau to investigate the Nashville shooting as an act of domestic terrorism.

“Our politics in general are getting more aggressive and more militant, and that isn’t exclusive to trans people or people fighting for trans rights,” Mr. Oliver says. “We need to have a cultural ceasefire.”

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Correction: A transgender female is wearing a bulletproof vest and pink face mask in a tweet referenced in this story. The individual was incorrectly described in the bulldog edition.