“It’s not who we are as a nation.”
—President Joe Biden
Unfortunately, it’s undeniable to me that guns and the violence they so often wreak in the United States are precisely who we are and have been historically as a nation. I may have learned about “Guns and Butter” in political science courses in college but maybe I should have taken the history class in “Guns and Bullets.”
I just looked it up and discovered that presidential assassinations in America— successful and attempted —date back to a man named Richard Lawrence who tried to kill President Andrew Jackson in 1835. He was a house painter and historians have speculated that his exposure to the toxic chemicals in paint in the 1800s caused his mental illness that led to his violent behavior. Until it had manifested itself, he was described by acquaintances as a “fine young man.”
In our history four American presidents have been assassinated— Abraham Lincoln (1865), James Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901) and John Kennedy (1963). One sitting president was injured by an assassination attempt— Ronald Reagan (1981). And two former presidents have been injured in attempts on their lives— Theodore Roosevelt (1912) and now Donald Trump. In all instances guns were the weapons used.
There have been an astounding number of unsuccessful assassination attempts or plots to have achieved that end against 12 other American presidents in office.
Trump’s attempted assassin is being identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks and although it’s not always been the case, the use of his full three names follows a strange tradition that includes of course John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald.
Handguns, shotguns, machine guns… In America if you want one, you can get one. And pardon the reference to the Billboard Hot 100, we’re number 1 in the world with a bullet! The number of civilian-owned firearms in the United States breaks down like this. For every 100 people there are 89 guns. The country in second place with 55 guns for every 100 people is Yemen which is in the midst of a civil war.*
And yes, we are ourselves barely civil about what laws we should have for regulating the possession of guns in America. You likely can guess that gun ownership breaks down starkly across party lines— 44% of Republicans and those independents who lean that way say they own a gun, while only 20% of Democrats and those independents who lean that way say they do.**
I imagine there are also those who when asked are not saying anything.
For one of our major political parties guns are as American as apple pie and you can make that two servings. For the other despite any efforts to affect serious change, the issue is today pretty much a minefield surrounding a third rail.
Just as President Biden did not offer thoughts and prayers in his messages of the past few days (For me at this point there is nothing more disingenuous you can say after any shooting in America.) he also made no mention of the elephant and the donkey in the room that so few politicians are brave enough to meaningfully confront head on— sane gun control!
For the present and indefinite future there seems no mass shooting horrific enough to envision to bridge our differences.
*The Small Arms Survey (SAS) is an independent research center in Geneva, Switzerland that provides information on aspects of small arms and violence committed with them.
**Pew Research Center
Biden has stridently mentioned, many times, the need for gun control and is continuously renewing attempts to ban certain automatic weapons.
Spot on. No one is safe - not 3rd graders nor presidents but there won’t be any new laws on guns. Unfortunately the focus is on “violent rhetoric” that leads to violence rather than easy access to weapons of war.