The assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the Republican contender for President, on July 14 is the latest incident in the stream of violence that has coursed through US body politics. Gun control is one of the most divisive elements in the politics of a country with the highest rate of firearm violence among industrialised countries where thousands of people perished from gunshots, including accidental firings and suicides every year. Trump opposes gun control along with his Republican political base — and is not expected to change now — while for President Joe Biden limiting their availability is an article of faith.
Gun violence, inevitability, spills into politics and its consequences become fodder for electoral rhetoric. Trump, who was injured in the assassination attempt, holds a position on gun control that has come to haunt him — but the near miss is unlikely to change his position. The opposition to gun control accords with that of his Republican base that holds sacrosanct a broad literal interpretation of the Constitution’s Second Amendment that says, “Right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”. The staunchest opponents of gun control in his base regulations are even against limitations on automatic and heavy-duty guns.
The gun laws mostly vary from state to state, with the Democratic-run states having the strictest laws. But even they cannot keep gun violence and the possession of weapons under control as domestic gun-runners transport and sell guns from states with lax controls to strict ones. One of the concessions that Trump had made was to curtail guns with bump stocks, an adapter that can make certain guns act like automatic weapons. The law, prompted by the killing of 60 people at a Las Vegas concert, was recently struck down by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority.
Amid the harsh and violent political rhetoric, death threats against politicians, judges, public figures, activists, and media personalities, have almost become commonplace. A man was arrested and charged last month with making death threats against Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran against Trump in the party primaries and dropped out to support the former president. The Secret Service and other federal and state agencies investigate hundreds of threats.
However, Republicans sought to blame the rhetoric against Trump for the assassination attempt. Senator J D Vance, considered one of those on Trump’s shortlist for vice president, posted on X, “Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination”. Republicans seized on Biden telling his supporters recently after his debate fiasco, “We’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bull’s eye”.
