Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. put his junk-science mind on full display in response to the recent school shooting in Minneapolis. When asked Thursday on Fox News whether the shooter’s reported transgender identity had any bearing on this tragedy, Kennedy revisited a debunked narrative about violence.

“We are doing those kind of studies now at [the National Institutes of Health]. We’re launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence,” Kennedy said. 

SSRIs are typically used to treat depression and anxiety disorders. Kennedy has repeated the soundly debunked claim that psychiatric medications lead to violent behavior. And Kennedy’s claim ignores the far more significant factor contributing to gun violence in the U.S.—the hundreds of millions of firearms in circulation. In fact, there is evidence that school shootings lead to an increase in young people seeking antidepressant treatments.

Statistically, it is exceedingly rare for transgender individuals to carry out mass shootings, and the right wing’s attempts to demonize trans children as potential threats is another hideous example of its moral decrepitude.