A lot of talking heads on television and a lot of politicians on social media said they were shocked at the shooting in Butler, Pa. Some spoke of “political violence” as if it’s distinct from all other violence that occurs every day in the USA — as if the political arena exists on some higher ground where violence should have no place. That’s a ridiculous notion, though I understand why people want to make this distinction. In America, we are supposed to vote, not shoot. When we speak of a tenet of American democracy, we speak of “the peaceful transfer of power,” though the Jan. 6 rioters, inspired by Trump, must have missed civics class that day.
Last night, Mike Kelly, a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, where the attempt on Trump’s life occurred, said the U.S. is “now a third world country” because of the shooting. “There is something dramatically wrong with this country right now,” he said.
Right now? I had to wonder where this cat had been for the last 50 or 60 years. This country has millions of guns, liberal gun laws promulgated mostly by Republican state and federal legislators, and lots of untreated mental illness. That’s the perfect recipe for the violent nation we have become. Violent crime is down in Joe Biden’s time, but we still have shootings of four or more people on a regular basis. Here’s the latest chart on mass shootings from the Gun Violence Archive:
Trump was not killed. He’s lucky. Most of the people at his rally are lucky that the shooter apparently did not have a bump stock that would have turned his assault-style rifle into a machine gun that the Supreme Court recently said is not really a machine gun. More than one person would have been killed, more than two wounded.
Spare me your shock.
Years ago, I was fishing with Bill Burton and Calvert Bregel, two of my older, wiser friends. We were knee-deep in the Gunpowder River, in northern Baltimore County.
“You know what?” Calvert said, looking downstream and squinting, as if to dislodge a memory. “I haven’t been here in a long time, but I think there used to be a nice covered bridge over this river.”
Indeed, there had been, and just 200 yards downstream from where we were fishing. The bridge had been built in the 1880s. It had lasted almost a century.
“Someone burned it down,” I said.
When I looked over, Calvert was staring at me, and it was an incredulous stare. Burn a covered bridge? Covered bridges were cherished relics of the country’s horse-drawn past, landmarks of the American odyssey. Burn a bridge? Calvert could not comprehend the intentional destruction of something so useful, idyllic and historic.
“What happened?” he said, and he wasn’t asking for details of the arson. “What happened?” was a much larger question about the profound and disturbing changes that had occurred in the country over the last few decades.
“They killed Kennedy, didn’t they?” I said, all of a sudden.
I don’t know where that came from, but there it was — floating in the chilly autumn air over the Gunpowder River. “They killed Kennedy.”
“Yes,” Calvert said, looking both stunned at the leap and nodding agreement with it. “You know, I’ve had that same thought many times myself. That it all started back then, when they killed JFK …”
Historians, who are clinical and logical, tend to avoid ascribing big societal changes to any single event, and I generally defer to that perspective.
But it’s impossible to look back 60 years, to recall Dallas, and not feel crushing loss and the gone-forever of an ideal in some corner of your soul. If you were too young to understand it at the time, you certainly saw it in the faces of the elders around you. I did.
It’s hard to look back to a day when a president traveled in an open limousine and not see a panorama of the violence that followed — the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., the shooting of George Wallace, the age of the gun, the death of John Lennon, the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, the mass shootings, and the great and awful pileup of daily deaths of our fellow Americans, including police officers and school children, in every decade since. Thousands of deaths by gun, and conservative politicians — the ones now claiming shock — unwilling to do anything about it.
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Dan Rodricks 
A perfect commentary on the gun culture of America.
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Wonderfully written Dan! I couldn’t agree more. I hope history doesn’t repeat itself, and inspire more shooters to exact revenge.
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Your comments hit the nail right on the head Dan. Very well written. Vote, not shoot is the way a civilized society should function. Granted the rhetoric from Trump himself foments extremism and violence. Now the extremist right is planting blame on Biden. Well, I hope we all take a step back and think through where we are today. Those at the very top of our laws (meaning the Supreme Court) should make a law regarding guns the way it relates to the weapons today. Next all politicians need to speak intelligibly, and we the people need to educate ourselves with a bit of history, logic and thoughtfulness before speaking, writing or acting out any form of violence.
Lynn Pakulla 410 591-1198
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The brother of murder victim Rachel Morin is scheduled to speak at the Republican convention this coming week. This was to be a “Willie Horton” moment, when the fact of an illegal immigrant who committed this terrible act would be the face of the anti-immigrant plank of the Republican party. This is a shameless exploitation of the Morin tragedy. The goal was to fan the anti-immigrant fervor and to contrast the “tough” Trump anti-immigrant policies with the Biden “open borders” policies.
Of course, the data are that the overwhelming number of murders and crimes here in the USA are committed by people born in the USA, and that the immigrant population has a smaller impact on crime than Trump would have us believe. Truth, to Donald Trump, is an irrelevancy. Indeed, around the time the Morin defendant was arrested by the Harford County authorities, there was a shooting at the Harford Mall by a Black man. Sheriff Gahler, so public with his anti-immigrant nonsense after the Morin defendant was arrested did not appear in the media to accuse all Blacks of criminal tendencies, for everyone knows that would be regarded as racist and untrue.
And now……..a 20 year old WHITE registered Republican from a town in Pennsylvania tried to assassinate Trump; a person attending the rally was shot and killed, and several others wounded. Will the family of the deceased rally attendee be at the Republican convention to speak on the need for gun control or access to mental health resources? Nah. Will anyone be there to talk about the need for legislation to ban bump stocks, or to pass “red flag” legislation? Nope. But, Ms. Morin’s brother will be there to speak, someone incongruously now, about the crimes of immigrants.
Will the immigrant victims of the Bel Air Rite-Aid distribution center murders of November 2018 (shot by a native born American with mental health problems and a Glock) be mentioned? Don’t count on it.
The common denominator of these murders is not the ethnicity of the perpetrator. It is a shooter with uncontrolled mental health problems and access to a powerful gun.
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And don’t for get the public lynchings of African Americans by police and ‘concerned’ citizens who use their knees and body weight instead of a gun.
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div>I wonder if he’ll change his tune now th
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On the mark, Dan
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Trump will use this to his advantage. He learns from nothing except the monsters who created him. We are at such a dangerous junction. Thank you for your eloquent piece. You speak for me, as well.
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Yes—it’s a SAD state of affairs! When are the “talking heads” going to pass laws and legislation which will HELP the poor, the homeless, the children who deserve to get an education — get rid of guns. Make this a country without crime and violence, where our children and grandchildren can go to school without having to be afraid!
Europeans had great respect for our country, but many are fearful of traveling to the USA now!
Laws are made to protect us- where are the legislatures who should be voting to pass laws to get rid of guns — to make our country safe for all!
God bring respect back to our USA !
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How much do you need to understand, that if a 20 year old, with limited life experience, can outwit sophisticated law enforcement technology with a single firearm, to then realize that we need common sense gun laws to prevent citizens from being able to own such high-powered weapons. Isn’t it that simple.
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Great column, but let’s not forget Congresswoman Gaby Gifford who was shot in the head. There were also, I believe, nine other people, including a child, who were killed that day. Katie
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Dan,You are absolutely right about the .major and very sad changes in this country since you and I were young.I drove from Westminster to D.C. to stand in a long line outside the Capitol building for hours when JFK was murdered. I did that to honor him. I know that I am living in a different country now.Senzt via the Samsung Galaxy S22 5G, an AT&T 5G smartphone
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