The attempted assassination of former President Trump on Saturday during a campaign rally was a shocking moment for the United States, although fortunately he was not seriously injured.
Since the nation’s founding, American presidents and presidential candidates have been killed or injured in acts of political violence, but it has been more than 40 years since such an attack, when Ronald Reagan was shot outside a Washington hotel in 1981. Hours after Saturday’s shooting, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “It is unbelievable that such an act could take place in our country.”
Sadly, it’s all too easy to believe that something like this would happen. Mass shootings and acts of political violence have become frighteningly frequent in the United States. No place is safe from bullets — not schools, not churches, not grocery stores, not Fourth of July parades — and no person is. Members of Congress have been shot in a parking lot and on a baseball field. And not even one of the most protected people in the world — a former president with a Secret Service team — is immune.
Candidates for public office, from school boards to Congress, receive regular threats of harm and death. Two years ago, Democrat Nancy Pelosi’s husband was seriously injured when a deranged person broke into their San Francisco home looking for the then-House speaker. And on January 6, 2021, armed assailants, some of them chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” stormed the Capitol building with the intent of overturning the results of the presidential election.
This should be a moment of unity, as both President Biden and Trump called for, to condemn the violence and mourn the victims with one voice. Trump was grazed by a bullet and three other people at the rally were hit. One attendee was killed and two others were seriously injured and were in stable condition Sunday.
Instead, the incident threatens to further divide this deeply polarized nation and foster more violence. In a nation with more guns than people, that should be a concern for all Americans.
It doesn't have to be this way. The example that political leaders set in the coming days is crucial to the development of the rest of the campaign. This is not the time to blame victims or demonise them.
Biden and other Democratic leaders were quick to condemn the violence, as they should be. And the president wisely called for an independent review of security measures at the rally, with the results made public. But some on the right used the incident to double down on their irresponsible claims. Several Republican elected officials went so far as to blame Biden and Democrats for the shooting. That's unfortunate.
We still don't know the motive of the shooter, identified as a 20-year-old man armed with an AR-15 rifle, the weapon of choice for mass shooters. The FBI says the shooter had explosive devices in his car. But what we do know is that whether it was a politically motivated shooting or not, it was certainly an act that has shaken America. Yes, this country is deeply divided over our shared future, but political violence is anathema to a democracy, where government is decided at the ballot box.
Trump and the Republican leaders gathered at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week have a particular responsibility not to use the shooting as a tool to inflame their base. They must recognize that America is a tinderbox right now and defuse the heated rhetoric before it is unleashed. By now, they must realize that violence, once unleashed, is impartial.
