Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes claimed on Piers Morgan Uncensored that Muslims were the second-largest group responsible for mass shootings in America, that psychiatric drugs were chiefly to blame, and that transgender people had recently led mass-shooting figures. The research does not substantiate those rankings.
The exchange came during the 22 October 2026 edition of Piers Morgan Uncensored, in a discussion involving broadcaster Andrew Neil about unrest in France, immigration and claims of an Islamist takeover of Europe. Around 32 minutes into the programme, Morgan changed the subject to America’s gun violence. McInnes replied with a series of claims about religion, mental health, medication and gender identity. This is what the evidence actually shows, followed by a look at McInnes’s record and the organisation he founded.
What do US mass-shooting figures actually show?
There is no single official definition of a mass shooting, which is essential context for the exchange. The Violence Prevention Project studies public incidents in which at least four people, excluding the offender, are killed, while excluding shootings linked to other underlying criminal activity. The Gun Violence Archive uses a broader threshold of at least four people shot, whether or not anyone dies. The Pew Research Center explains why totals vary so dramatically between definitions.
The Violence Prevention Project’s published findings, based on its historical database of US public mass shootings, identify the following characteristics:
- 98% of perpetrators were male.
- 64% were white. The racial distribution varies by the setting and the cases included.
- The average perpetrator was 34 years old.
These figures are not a breakdown of every incident in which four people have been shot. They do, however, show why neither McInnes’s proposed religious ranking nor Morgan’s claim that major massacres are almost exclusively committed by young white men can be treated as a precise statistical conclusion. Men account for an overwhelming majority in this dataset, but the evidence does not justify suggesting virtually all perpetrators are white.
McInnes’s claims versus the evidence
Claim: Muslims are the second-largest group behind American mass shootings
McInnes told Morgan: “We have 1% Muslims in America. They are the number two group behind mass shootings.” The population estimate is broadly in line with Pew’s 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study, which found 1.2% of US adults identify as Muslim. But the asserted ranking of perpetrators is not supported by the major datasets cited in this article. They do not establish Muslims as the second-largest religious group responsible for mass shootings.
Islamist-motivated shootings have occurred in America, including the Fort Hood attack, which McInnes mentioned. Acknowledging individual attacks is not evidence for a claim about an entire religious population. When Morgan asked for the proportion of US mass shootings committed by Muslims, McInnes switched to a claim about attacks worldwide rather than providing the US figure requested. That international number was not verified in the programme.
Claim: People taking SSRIs or other psychiatric medication are the principal perpetrators
McInnes initially answered Morgan’s question by invoking mentally ill people taking drugs from “big pharma”, referring to SSRIs, a type of antidepressant. The statement conflates having a mental health condition, being prescribed medication and medication actually causing violence.
The drinking-water test
Imagine somebody discovered that 100% of people who committed school shootings had drunk water. That might be completely true. But nearly everybody who has never committed a shooting also drinks water. Would we seriously conclude that drinking water causes school shootings?
Of course not. Drinking water would be something the perpetrators had in common, not an explanation for their actions. The same logical mistake occurs when someone discovers that a shooter was once prescribed an antidepressant and jumps to the conclusion that the drug caused the attack.
To investigate a genuine connection, researchers need to ask how common the medication is among people who never become violent, why it was prescribed, whether the person was taking it at the time, and what other factors could explain the behaviour. This is the difference between correlation and causation. SSRIs are real medicines with potential side effects, unlike this deliberately simple water example, but their presence in someone’s medical history does not establish that they caused a shooting.
A 2025 FactCheck.org examination reported that researchers using the Columbia Mass Murder Database found only about 4% of US mass shooters in their dataset had a documented history of antidepressant use, and about 7% had a history of taking any psychotropic medication. The researchers cautioned that medication histories may be incomplete, but concluded there is no scientific basis for alleging that antidepressants such as SSRIs directly cause mass shootings.
Another dataset provides a useful comparison, but no evidence of causation. The Violence Prevention Project’s findings, reported by FactCheck.org, identified 22 public mass shooters, approximately 11% of those in its database, with a recorded history of SSRI use between 1966 and 2024. That percentage is in the same broad range as some estimates of antidepressant use in the US general population, but the measures are not directly comparable: SSRIs are only one type of antidepressant, and the populations and time periods differ. Columbia’s 4% figure also comes from a separate database with different definitions. Neither percentage establishes that medication caused violent behaviour.
Separately, Columbia University psychiatrists have reported that psychotic illness is not a key factor in most mass shootings. Different studies use different definitions and look at different types of mental ill health. None supports treating patients receiving antidepressants as the principal perpetrators.
Claim: Transgender people have led mass-shooting figures in recent years
McInnes went on to assert that transgender people were leading the figures over the preceding two years, mentioning around five incidents. But a September 2025 FactCheck.org review found the Gun Violence Archive had identified five confirmed transgender perpetrators among 5,748 mass shootings from January 2013 to September 2025, fewer than 0.1% of incidents by its definition. Even allowing for a handful of disputed or unconfirmed identities would not make transgender perpetrators the leading group.
That review predates the October 2026 interview, so its historical count should not be presented as an independently checked October 2026 total. Nevertheless, McInnes offered no verifiable recent dataset or consistent definition to demonstrate his sweeping claim.
Claim: American gun violence is primarily a problem of Black communities
McInnes also moved between the broader problem of gun homicides, street violence in particular cities, and public mass massacres. These are not interchangeable measures. A claim about the racial distribution of victims or perpetrators of all homicide cannot, on its own, establish who commits high-fatality public mass shootings. The distinction matters because changing the category during an argument can make separate statistics appear to contradict one another when they do not.
Who is Gavin McInnes?
Gavin McInnes was born in England, raised in Canada and became prominent as one of the founders of Vice, the magazine that grew into a major international media company. He departed in 2008. His subsequent career shifted towards provocative political commentary, much of it focused on race, immigration, feminism and Islam. Vanity Fair’s 2021 investigation traces that development through interviews with McInnes, former colleagues and acquaintances.
In 2016, McInnes founded the Proud Boys, describing the male-only group as a fraternity of “Western chauvinists”. The group has consistently rejected being labelled racist, and McInnes has denied advocating unlawful violence. But interviews and recordings provide a record of his rhetoric that deserves scrutiny. In footage later reported by NPR, he said: “I cannot recommend violence enough.” In a December 2018 ABC News interview, he said he regretted remarks about violence and disputed the claim that he was encouraging illegal assaults.
The 2026 Morgan interview itself offered further evidence of his language. In discussing the French unrest, McInnes described one purported group of participants as “Muslim savages”. Andrew Neil challenged the suggestion that unrest in France amounted to an Islamist uprising, pointing instead to France’s long history of political protest and the different groups involved.
The Proud Boys, political violence and January 6
McInnes announced his departure from the Proud Boys in 2018. That distinction is important: it would be inaccurate to describe him as the leader directing the group’s later involvement in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol, or to attribute its members’ criminal convictions personally to him.
Nevertheless, the organisation’s documented history is central to understanding his public record. The Canadian government’s current listed-terrorist-entities register identifies the Proud Boys as an ideologically motivated violent extremist group that engages in political violence and embraces white supremacist and antisemitic ideology. That is Canada’s legal classification and government description, not a statement that the same legal designation applies in the United States or Britain.
On 4 May 2023, the US Department of Justice announced that four Proud Boys leaders had been convicted of seditious conspiracy over the Capitol attack. President Donald Trump subsequently granted clemency covering January 6 offences on 20 January 2025. Pardons and commutations do not change the facts of the original jury verdicts.
This raises a legitimate question about the contrast between McInnes’s public attempts to portray the Proud Boys as an ordinary social club and the record of political violence involving members of the movement he created. It does not make him criminally liable for every subsequent action of the group.
What the interview demonstrates
McInnes was entitled to challenge Morgan’s assertions, which themselves needed tighter definitions. But his alternative explanation did not rest on a consistent dataset. He treated religion, race, gender identity, mental health and prescription medication as if they were competing categories in a single ranking. They are not. A perpetrator could fall into multiple categories, and several of these characteristics are not routinely or reliably recorded in shooting databases.
The strongest conclusion is therefore narrower and more defensible than either panellist’s soundbite: research consistently finds that public mass shootings are overwhelmingly perpetrated by men, while the religious ranking and claims about SSRIs and transgender perpetrators offered by McInnes have not been substantiated. His involvement in establishing the Proud Boys supplies important context for evaluating his public commentary, but the shooting claims must stand or fall on data.
Sources and methodology
The quotes and timings above have been checked against the available episode transcript, which is automatically generated and may contain transcription errors. The official podcast listing confirms the broadcast date and guests. The statistical evidence is drawn from the Violence Prevention Project, Columbia University, Pew Research Center and FactCheck.org; the organisational and legal record is linked above to NPR, ABC News, Canadian Public Safety and the US Department of Justice.
Watch the exchange
The discussion with McInnes and Andrew Neil begins at approximately 15 minutes 50 seconds, and the exchange about US mass shootings starts at approximately 32 minutes 17 seconds. The full episode was published on 22 October 2026.
