The United States woke up this Sunday still rubbing its eyes at the unreality of the images of the attack on Donald Trump the afternoon before at a meeting in Butler, in northwestern Pennsylvania. In addition, a battery of urgent questions must be answered.
Goods the deeds of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old who the former president slightly wounded and one killed, a consequence of the growing polarization that fuels this country’s political class every day from both sides of the spectrum? What went wrong with the security protocols that allowed the man to comfortably take aim from the roof of an industrial building 500 feet from where Trump was addressing thousands of his followers? Did it take too long for the Secret Service and local and state agents, who some witnesses say had been warning of the shooter for minutes, to take action? And also: Would stricter gun laws than Pennsylvania’s have prevented an assassination attempt that resurrected the worst minds in America? the history of political violence in the United States?
Trump himself attempted to respond to the first of the questions for his political advantage on Sunday morning with a post on his social network Truth, which said: “Right now, it's more important than ever let's stay united and let us show our true character as Americans by standing strong and determined and not letting evil win.' It is still ironic that the author of those words is the same one who stoked the Big Lie that the 2020 election was a fraud and that Joe Biden – who also called for unity – is an illegitimate president. The same one, too, who later incited a mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
That episode marked a before and after in the political polarization that the two Americas have been facing for years and this has been accentuated by the pandemic. A completely paralyzed Congress, victim of the confrontation between Democrats and Republicans, ultra-politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene who abandon decorum to resort to personal attacks, and the flawed discourse encouraged by social networks are the ingredients of a dangerous breeding ground. The ideal recipe to spread among Americans the feeling that they are more conflicted than ever in their recent history.
These months often bring back memories of a particularly turbulent election cycle: 1968, the year of the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Perhaps that is why, upon learning of the attack, the Biden campaign announced it would stop airing campaign ads, which often blatantly fueled the rhetoric of confrontation. A few hours later, and after a brief mirage of reconciliation, both sides were once again accusing each other. of inciting the attack on Trump with his partisan rhetoric.
Reflecting this drift, the theory that the threat of a second civil war could arise has yielded a fortune. in certain circles academics, and also in cinemas: Civil war, one of the most talked about movies This year imagines a country embroiled in a fratricidal feud. Episodes like 2022 hammer attack on Paul Pelosihusband of the then-president of the House of Representatives, and the rise of extremist militias with heavily armed members, filled with conspiracy theorists and white supremacists, as well as the FBI's alarm over a growing number of acts of so-called “domestic terrorism,” complete the portrait of a society on edge.
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A study published last month and conducted by the political science professor of the University of Chicago Robert Pape found that 7% of respondents would support the use of force to return Trump to the White House, and that one in 10 would welcome the use of force for the opposite purpose: to prevent the Republican from becoming president again. Of those, a third answered yes when asked if they owned a gun.
But that should come as no surprise: Americans (some 333 million, according to the latest census) are estimated to have an arsenal that far outnumbers them: some 393 million guns in all. Their use is enshrined in the Second Amendment to the Constitution and by a Supreme Court with a super-conservative bent that has repeatedly renewed its commitment to that right.
The Pennsylvania Case
Pennsylvania is one of the states with permissive gun laws. Crooks shot the former president with an AR-15, a semi-automatic rifle used in most mass shootings that are devastating a country suffering from a veritable epidemic of gun violence. His father had bought it five months earlier, but he could have done it himself: in Pennsylvania, you only have to be 18 years old to buy such a weapon, which can fire hundreds of bullets in a few seconds (paradoxically, to buy such a weapon you must have served 21, the legal drinking age). The AR-15 is a rifle that was patented in the 1950s for military purposes and that has, unfortunately, over the decades become an indispensable icon for deciphering the mysteries of American life.
In Pennsylvania, a pivotal state in November’s presidential election, there is no limit on the number of guns you can own, and no training is required to get one. What’s more, except in Philadelphia, the most populous city, it’s legal to carry them in plain sight: on your belt, for example, or, in the case of a gun like the one Crooks uses, slung over your shoulder.
The restriction on the possession of these high-capacity assault weapons is one of Biden’s old battlehorses, who passed a law banning them when he was a senator in 1994. That law remained in effect for more than three decades until Congress squandered an opportunity to renew it. Every time one of the many gun tragedies that have rocked the country, voices are raised calling for a bipartisan agreement to do something about it. But nothing ever happens. The question now is whether Trump supporters, who They also tend not to set boundaries on the Second Amendment, they will change their minds. And the answer is that this scenario is highly unlikely.
As for the security shortcomings, anyone who’s been to a Trump rally knows that these are extremely protected events: There are metal detectors, the kind you go through at airports, and Secret Service snipers don’t do that. They lose details from the nearby rooftops of what’s happening down there, among the attendees, who usually number in the thousands.
So how did Crooks get to the spot from which he aimed at the former president? There is still no information to know, although the idea spread on Sunday that the coming investigation will cast a bad light on those responsible for the logistics and security of the event. At this point, the House of Representatives Oversight and Accountability Committee in Washington has already announced that it will investigate the attempted assassination of the former president and has asked Secret Service Director Kimberly A. Cheatle to testify at the Capitol on July 22.
As the hours passed, doubts grew as to whether the officers ignored the warnings of the rally’s participants. According to one of them, the BBC unsuccessfully reported that an armed suspect was stationed in a nearby building. Fortunately, Crooks turned out to be a poor marksman.
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