I’ve been trying to avoid news articles exploring the many conspiracy theories swirling around Saturday’s assassination attempt on former President Trump.
At this point, all we know about the incident that happened last weekend in Butler, Pennsylvania, is that a socially awkward young man with some shooting experience and ownership of a high-powered assault weapon decided to do something that most of us cannot comprehend but that comes to mind with alarming frequency among young American men steeped in gun culture.
Suspect Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, climbed onto the unlocked roof of a building within rifle range of the rally, took up a hidden position and opened fire, killing one spectator and wounding Trump and two others before being shot dead by a sniper.
Does it matter that Crooks was a registered Republican?
Does it matter that he once donated to a liberal-leaning pro-vote group?
I don’t think any of that is particularly important, but I would say that partisans of all political parties should remember this horrible truth: Our country is ravaged by gun violence because we have done too little to limit the availability of weapons of war.
Don’t let the pomp and circumstance of this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee fool you into thinking Trump should return to the White House. His near-death experience does nothing to change the deeply anti-democratic future he and the Heritage Foundation envision for the country.
On Monday, the first day of the convention, Trump nominated his own miniature running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, the Ohio Republican who called Trump “the American Hitler” before finally turning to Jesus and bowing to the former president.
Can you imagine VP Vance following in VP Mike Pence’s footsteps and refusing to issue orders to overturn the will of the voters?
Vance deftly displayed his partisan credentials when he wrote to X that Democrats were to blame for the shooting and that it was “not just an isolated incident.”
Well, he’s half right.
Saturday’s shooting is by no means an isolated incident, and unless politicians are willing to listen to the American people’s support for stricter gun control, we will not be able to escape the bloody violence that periodically rocks our families, schools, communities, and movements.
“We cannot allow this violence to become normalized,” President Biden said in the Oval Office on Sunday. “The political rhetoric in this country has become so heated. It’s time to calm down. We all have a responsibility to do so.” (Hmm, does this include Mark Robinson, the crazed Republican gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina, who said in a church last month that “some people just have to die”?)
I understand Biden’s feelings, but I think he misses the point: this kind of violence has become completely normalized in America.
As historians Matthew and Robert Dallek wrote in The New York Times on Monday, the attack on Trump “is one of the more common cases on the list of attempted presidential assassinations.” Between 1963 and 1981, gunmen opened fire on “three presidents, two presidential candidates and two civil rights leaders.” Among the world’s democracies, Dallek wrote, the United States leads the pack when it comes to assassination attempts on government leaders. Needless to say, among those countries, the U.S. also leads in gun violence.
On the day of the assassination attempt on President Trump, at least 59 mass shootings occurred in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive. 34 people were killed, including Trump supporter Cory Comperatore, and 80 were injured, including President Trump. The bloodiest incident was a drive-by shooting at a nightclub in Birmingham, Alabama, that left four people dead and at least 10 injured. You probably haven’t even heard of that incident.
Given the heavy security that surrounds presidents, former presidents, and presidential candidates, what’s most shocking about the assassination attempt on Trump is that an assassin was able to get within striking distance of Trump in the first place — the worst security lapse since John Hinckley Jr. shot President Reagan at close range on a Washington sidewalk in 1981.
A 2022 study by the California Firearm Violence Research Center at the University of California, Davis, found that Republicans, “particularly MAGA-supporting Republicans,” are far more likely to support political violence than others. Given what we experienced on January 6, 2021, this is not surprising.
“There is growing concern that this year’s election will lead to or be decided by political violence,” Garren Wintemute, the center’s founder, wrote in a prescient essay in The Hill last month.
I hope he’s wrong, but I fear he’s right.
