In the weeks since the attempted assassination of former President Trump, new details have emerged, leading to increased mythologizing and speculation about the motives behind the attack. While the true intentions of the would-be assassin may never be fully understood, the incident has ignited a wave of conspiracy theories and, as usual, rabid public discourse. This essay attempts to explore the implications of this shocking event, acknowledging the complexities of the gun violence situation in our country while emphasizing that no one deserves to be targeted in such a violent manner. Ever.
The Escalation of Political Violence from Rhetoric to Reality
In 2015, when Donald Trump announced that he was running for president, no one expected that he would make it to the Oval Office. We were wrong. Throughout his term, he used wild rhetoric to rile up the worst in our society and he did it with indifference to the consequences, as long as it got him support.
A few weeks ago, I got a cold chill in my heart at the news that shots had been fired in my old home state at a Trump political rally. It was the same feeling I had when, on a cold January day early in 2021, I watched a mob of extremist goons hang out a noose for the then-incumbent vice president after beating several policemen and bystanders nearly to death while breaking into the US Capitol. As the news poured in from Pennsylvania, I felt worse and worse. A dark cloud of violence, racism, hate and conspiracy theories has dominated the Trump political movement since he came down the golden escalator to announce his candidacy.
In Butler, Pennsylvania, it turned out that, once again, a “lone gunman” with an assault rifle took several shots from a nearby roof, one of which may have hit the candidate's ear as he ranted behind the podium. In the meantime, we at least know that the gunman's plot failed. Even so, this is a storyline we are all too familiar with in this country. Time after time, lone gunmen have tried to make their violent solutions to the politics of their day or to get their faces on TV for a few moments. The most recent one was essentially no different, except that, fortunately for Donald Trump, his attempt failed. Others at the rally weren't as lucky. Very little has been said by Trump about them.
The Legacy of Political Violence from Kennedy to Reagan to Trump
The attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley Jr. in 1981 occurred when I was a child, leaving an impression primarily through my parents' intense reactions. Their generation had witnessed the traumatic assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, and in the intervening years, they had endured the losses of Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X, and other prominent figures to political violence. Hinckley's attack on Reagan, even two decades after JFK's death, resonated deeply with those who had lived through this turbulent era of American history.
It was perhaps naive to believe we had moved into more sophisticated times, especially considering the 2011 shooting of Gabby Giffords, who fortunately survived. We now find ourselves in an era dominated by gun violence, not like in the Wild West, but under the influence of companies profiting from the sale of military-grade weapons to virtually anyone. Since Congress banned a CDC study on gun violence in 1996, incidents of gun-related violence have more than doubled—a troubling correlation. As states like North Carolina seek to relax gun ownership requirements, it raises the critical question: how many more lives must be lost before the focus shifts from profits to public safety?
As I write this Congress is grilling Secret Service and FBI leadership to find out more about how this latest iteration of the “lone gunman” was allowed to get as close as they did before being killed themselves. It is impossible to guess what led this person to do something so awful. We might speculate and there are some interesting points to consider, but none are satisfying enough to solve the problems associated with an attempted assassination. The most poignant question is how was this 20-year-old person able to get a firearm of this kind and plan things so successfully to have been able to endanger a presidential candidate.
While numerous theories circulate online, they are the intellectual equivalent of dollar store theories; thin, poorly made, easily dismantled. However, one perspective merits consideration: the potential link between Trump's policies and the assassination attempt. During his presidency, Trump's close alignment with the NRA and gun lobbies, coupled with his failure to enact stricter gun control measures following mass shootings, may have inadvertently facilitated the very attack he faced. The assailant's weapon was obtained legally, underscoring a critical point: easy access to firearms often leads to increased violence.
This situation highlights a broader issue as well: violent crime is frequently a direct result of readily available firearms. While this is a simplification of a complex problem, it addresses a fundamental question in the debate. In a sense, Trump's promotion of policies favoring unrestricted gun access and his use of inflammatory rhetoric may have contributed to creating a cultural environment that ultimately threatened his own safety. This irony persists regardless of the shooter's political affiliations, exemplifying the chaotic societal conditions that Trump's words and actions (and those of his supporters) have arguably fostered.
The Right's Gun Paradox of Rhetoric, Reality, and Responsibility
Now that a prominent figure on the right has been attacked, I can’t help but wonder if we’ll see right-wing legislators start to quietly reconsider access to assault rifles, despite their years of resistance to such measures. They’ve become quite skilled at saying one thing in public while doing another behind the scenes. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them even dare to suggest that it’s the left that has fostered a culture where gun violence is as common as baseball and apple pie.
These kinds of contradictory talking points are all too familiar in today’s political landscape. I still remember watching a prominent member of Congress fleeing from rioters in the Capitol, only to later endorse the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen. It’s striking how quickly they seem to forget the fear of being preyed upon by the very chaos they’ve helped create.
Over the past decade, far-right pundits and political candidates have consistently pushed a narrative of escalating crime rates and the purported necessity of home defense with assault rifles. This rhetoric, however, stands in stark contrast to their actions. While accepting billions in campaign contributions from firearm lobbies, right-wing lawmakers have consistently failed to address the root causes of gun violence.
The irony deepens when we consider their response to mass shootings. They're often the first to highlight the mental health issues of perpetrators, yet their policy record tells a different story. Many supported measures that have systematically dismantled progressive mental health resources nationwide. This glaring disconnect between words and actions on the right raises serious questions about their true priorities and the impact of their influence on public safety and health policy. It might be funny if it wasn't so tragic. This latest episode punctuates the problem with a bullet.
The conclusion one draws, then, is self-evident: the aftermath of this most recent gun crime is a direct result of the right’s complicity. They just aren't very good at reaping what they have sown, and the only way they face recrimination is by being voted out of office. Those who continue to vote Republican despite what the party has become, have shown they don't have the moral grit to accomplish that needed change. Despite atrocity after horrible atrocity, they continue to back Trump because they “don’t like” the other guy. That problem will soon be at an end, if he is re-elected. This has been foreshadowed in Trump’s latest soundbite in which he confirms that, if people vote for him, they’ll never have to vote again. This is where we stand.
The Conflict Between Your Personal Freedom and My Public Safety
I am not anti-gun; I recognize that firearms are tools with a legitimate—and carefully controlled—place in society. While I may not always understand or approve of how others use their weapons—be it for hunting or self-defense—I believe that responsible gun owners should have the freedom to possess them. However, I regularly encounter individuals in my town carrying guns who perhaps shouldn't. Unfortunately, the system is far from perfect. For some, possessing a firearm is as perilous as handling the president's nuclear football. A visit to any Walmart in my state can be quite revealing in this regard.
Owning and carrying a gun is about responsibility and accountability. Safe handling and legal controls set in place in a society are apt to guarantee safety from general gun violence in most cases. The most common argument for gun control has been parroted over and over. If we criminalize the possession of certain guns, then only criminals will be able to get ahold of them. This is a ‘false dilemma’ fallacy, though, because it pretends that the situation is an ‘either/or’ problem. It is not.
My position is that our home does not need to be defended with a gun and even if it did get breached, my first reaction wouldn't be to have that gun in my hand. Too much can go wrong. Especially if one takes their time to consider all the nightmare possibilities. I’ve never trained for close-quarters combat, my night vision is declining and muzzle flash and bang are disorienting to the user as much as to anyone else in the house.
My friend, a retired judge, once told me that when you fire a gun, you are legally responsible for the bullets or pellets until they stop moving. This is a horrifying thought. The pro-home defense propaganda suggests that the only way to truly protect your family from invaders (ignoring the deeply racist underlying insinuations of such a scenario—it won't be other “good guys with guns” presumably) is by having a semi-automatic firearm to hand when the dreaded moment happens.
My ambivalence about this comes from the many ways in which this scenario can go very wrong indeed. Imagine that, firing just one round from my gun, I accidentally shoot our son or Micki or one of our pets or myself. Imagine if one of my bullets travels through the house, penetrates my neighbor's home, and hits or kills one of them. What if it hits responding law enforcement or EMS or a passing driver? I would be legally responsible for each of these deadly mishaps regardless of whether or not I had discharged my weapon in this most appropriate situation.
This doesn't even take into account that homes with guns in them are statistically far more likely to be the place where a shooting death occurs, whether accidental or during the heat of an intense argument. Having a gun is a big responsibility.
In some situations, one’s home or property may get broken into. There are provisions that homeowners can make to prevent this without resorting to purchasing firearms for the defense of the homestead. These situations are never cut and dry. We might reach some kind of balance on the topic, too, if ever we could unfurl the crooked fingers of the gun lobby from our legislative branch.
The Bloody Sword of Rhetoric, Consequences and Hope in a Divided America
The gun problem in our country won't be solved anytime soon. The consequences of the morbid mishandling of years of research warning us against the dangers of an open-carry society are coming due. It won't be pretty. It hasn't been to this point. It will get worse before it gets better. Like almost everything in our country, we are deeply divided even on topics that ought to be easily solved by a modern, progressive culture. Winston Churchill once famously said that America will always do the right thing, once we have tried everything else. His quip is, as ever, barbed with a painful truth.
My mind keeps going back to Butler. A snippet of Scripture echoes in my head as I watch the former president duck and clutch his head endlessly on news channels and social media. “All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” It may seem heartless to suggest that Trump is responsible for his assassination attempt. I am glad the man didn't die because he doesn't deserve to be killed any more than any other person did that day. However, what I do wish is that he had the self-awareness to understand that his rhetoric probably caused this violence in much the same way that it caused 1/6, the attack on former House Speaker Pelosi's husband, and the brutal violence at Charlottesville, just to mention a few.
The former guy got quite lucky. It was a lesson others paid for, as usual in his case and he has since attempted to exploit it. Sadly, he has proven time and again to be unchanging in his inability to accept consequences. He continues to seek to escape all culpability while promoting a pathological antipathy to accountability. After all, if he can just get back to the Oval Office, he can declare himself free of his nagging felonies and other pending investigations. Another Trump term would literally represent a get-out-of-jail-free card for him.
Despite his apparent delusions to the contrary, Trump is not immortal. His rebarbative lifestyle, the stress of his debt and felony convictions, his frenetic rally schedule and his poor diet will all come calling sooner or later. I can hope to outlive the man and still wish him a long life in which to face the steep consequences of his decades of reprehensible behavior ranging from sexual assault to stealing top secret documents to causing an insurrection at the Capitol. He’s due for a bit of accountability. There’s no telling what his supporters might do, if he got back into office, hoping to be exonerated for their use of weapons to eliminate their perceived enemies in that case. Had he been martyred, the world outside our doors might already be quite different. We ought to be thankful he’s still with us.
For all this, I take some hope with me each day, as I head out into this dangerous culture. We’ve fixed problems like this before and I believe we will, again. Critics of Trump can and should unequivocally condemn both the attempted assassination and his inflammatory rhetoric without contradiction. This stance against all forms of violence and dangerous speech sets us apart from his supporters, who often engage in deadly hypocritical double standards and lethal casuistry. There is no moral ambiguity here: one can vehemently oppose political violence while simultaneously rejecting the divisive and often reckless language that has characterized Trump's execrable political career. This position demonstrates a commitment to principled civil discourse and democratic values that transcend partisan loyalties.
As we consider our nation's future, we must face crucial questions with rigorous honesty, engaging in genuine civil discourse rather than inflammatory rhetoric. The easy path leads to upheaval, while the challenging route demands a return to Enlightenment principles. True freedom requires safeguarding everyone's liberties, including protection from gun violence—a universal principle applying to all citizens and public figures. This difficult path is essential for preserving a just society under the rule of law.
To progress, we must seek common ground, balancing individual rights with collective security. By rising above partisan divides and recommitting to reason, equality and justice, we can build a society embodying liberty and justice for all, where the pursuit of happiness isn't overshadowed by the threat of a gunshot.
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