Assassin

American law enforcement describes the incident as an apparent assassination attempt. That may be subject to debate.

No shots were fired at Donald Trump who was playing golf Sunday afternoon in Florida. Secret Service personnel saw a rifle sticking out of the bushes about 500 yards from where the former US president was. They fired shots in the direction of the potential shooter.

The suspected assassin tried to flee in his car but was intercepted some distance from the golf course. He was identified as 60-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, a White man working in North Carolina. An assault rifle was recovered from the scene. The man has been described as mentally unstable.

From his social media accounts, since shut down, it appears Routh voted for Trump in 2016 and favored Nikki Haley in the last Republican primaries. Over the past few years, he has been trying to gather support for Ukraine’s resistance against Russia.

The reports are still sketchy as this point. If the initial law enforcement assessment is correct, this is the second attempt on Trump’s life in just a few weeks.

The first attempt involved a shooter armed with an assault rifle positioned quite close to the stage where Trump was holding a rally in a small town in Pennsylvania. The shooter, a young White male registered as a Republican, was killed by Secret Service snipers moments after he started shooting. Trump was grazed in the ear and a supporter was killed. A couple of attendees in the rally were injured.

Doubts have been cast about the first assassination attempt. Trump never went to hospital after he was reported shot. Although some blood was seen coming from the supposedly wounded ear, no scars nor scabbing were seen in Trump’s ear just days after the incident. Trump himself never seemed too eager to discuss the incident.

Because of these considerations, not a few think the whole thing was staged to benefit Trump politically. The remains of the shooter were quickly cremated. To date, no final official report has been issued just yet.

Both the Pennsylvania shooter and the man arrested in Florida share several characteristics. They were both socially isolated, emotionally unstable White men who nevertheless had easy access to powerful firearms. They both appear to be lone wolves, undertaking their murderous projects by their lonesome.

The share the same demographic characteristics of dozens of other shooters who have assaulted elementary schools and killed scores of schoolchildren. Just a few days ago, a 14-year-old emotionally disturbed boy shot and killed four people in a school in Georgia.

Despite the fact that the police had questioned the boy last year about threatening to shoot up his school, his father gave him an assault rifle for Christmas. The irresponsible father is now charged along with his murderous son.

If we go by the mass shootings that occur nearly daily all over the US along with the two assassination attempts on a presidential candidate, there is clearly an urgent need to tighten gun laws. Citizens have been calling for this for years. But the Republican politicians, with their dogmatic reading of the constitutional amendment covering the right to bear arms, have resisted gun control.

The two assassination attempts on Trump deserve more specific inquiry.

Trump has been an extremely polarizing political figure, spewing hateful rhetoric at every turn. This may not be very healthy in a society where there are more privately held guns than there are citizens.

There are hundreds of thousands of emotionally disturbed, socially isolated individuals in America. All of them have easy access to assault weapons. All of them need only the slightest provocation to start shooting.

For as long as the Republican Party retains enough clout, there will be no progress in curtailing gun access. Mass shootings and, in the case of Trump, attempted assassinations will continue to be an epidemic.

Gun control ought to be a strategic question in the coming elections. Unfortunately, it does not rank very high in the hierarchy of voter concerns. Despite the almost daily occurrence of mass shootings and random homicides, gun control will not be the decisive issue in the coming elections. Americans are more interested in immigration policy than in gun control.

For this reason, even the Democratic Party does not put gun policy primacy in its platform. They do not want to alienate the majority of voters who are also gun owners.

Therefore, guns will continue to proliferate in American society. Gun violence will be a continuing source of grief.

On the basis of the evidence law enforcers have on hand, it does not appear that the two assassination attempts on Trump are the outcomes of a broad conspiracy. Nevertheless, because of the sheer proliferation of arms, it is easy to imagine that a close, heavily polarized election could spark widespread violence.

By encouraging the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at Washington DC, Donald Trump might have let a dangerous genie out: the possibility that electoral choices might be overridden by the application of force.

A malevolent power seeking to weaken America’s standing in the world might try to spark some sort of civil war in the aftermath of next November’s vote. If that is the goal, then the most viable means is to agitate Trump supporters. The heavily armed right-wing militias that are fashionable mainly in the Republican-leaning states have the means for insurrection.