As tragic as it is, the Trump assassination attempt should lead to conversations on how to solve gun homicides and reduce them further. We have to start with talking about gun violence.
Secret Service director questioned over Trump assassination attempt
Lawmakers grilled the Secret Service director over protocol failures the day Donald Trump was nearly assassinated.
In the United States, 327 people are shot every day. On July 13, former President Donald Trump was one of them.
The shooting at Trump’s reelection campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a person was killed and two were wounded, is a tragedy and a huge failure on the part of law enforcement. It is something that we should all find despicable, no matter your political alignment.
We now know that the 20-year-old gunman even flew a drone over the rally area two hours before Trump’s speech. The assassination attempt was such a security failure that Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned.
The conversation and congressional hearings over the security failure started happening days after the shooting, a part of conversation that was needed.
And yet, I have seen very few elected officials actually talk about gun violence and the need for more legal intervention despite the weapon used at the Trump rally being a favorite among mass shooters. You would think an assassination attempt would force the country to take gun violence seriously. You’d be wrong.
So I decided to talk to David Hogg, 24, who has spent the past six years fighting for better gun laws after surviving one of the country’s most notorious mass school shootings.
The importance of talking about gun violence
Hogg, who was a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, when a former student killed 17 people on Valentine’s Day in 2018, is the co-founder of March For Our Lives.
Because of his own experience with shootings and his advocacy work, Hogg noticed quickly how little conversation there was about guns at the Republican National Convention, either for or against, after the attempt on Trump’s life.
“It shows that they’re really running from this issue more than anything,” he told me.
During Trump’s acceptance speech at the RNC on July 18, the former president noted that he would likely never tell the story of the shooting again because it was “too painful.” Hogg contrasts that remark with his own experience and points to a campaign rally Trump held in January after a school shooting in Iowa. The day after that tragedy, the former president told Iowans that we “have to get over it.”
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“Despite his harrowing story and what he’s been through, he talked about how hard it is for him to talk about it,” Hogg said. “Imagine how hard it is for the kids in Parkland to talk about it. Imagine how hard it is for parents who fear for their kids’ lives. I’m thankful that he survived, but I also hope that he understands how offensive it is to tell people just to get over it.”
Despite the difficulty, it’s important for people to talk about it. As tragic as it is, the Trump assassination attempt will hopefully lead to conversations on how to solve gun homicides and reduce them further than the 16.4% they have fallen since 2021. We have to start with talking about it.
Gun laws have worked in the past
Hogg notes that gun laws have made a difference in Florida and throughout the country since the shooting at his high school. He points to the state’s “red flag law,” which prevents firearms from being sold to people who could be threats to themselves or others. Since the law was implemented in his home state, it has been used more than 12,000 times.
In 2022, the federal government passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act by working together. Since it was implemented, hundreds of illegal gun purchases have been stopped.
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“It’s obviously important that we do all that we can to prevent it because, by the time that there’s a shooter on a building, by the time that there’s a shooter in a parking lot or in a classroom, it is too late,” Hogg said, “because somebody is already going to die.”
Both parties have, in the past, been willing to work across the aisle to prevent more gun deaths from happening. When President Ronald Reagan survived an assassination attempt in 1981, it led to the passage of the Brady Act. It was named for James Brady, Reagan’s White House press secretary who survived a bullet wound to the head that day.
The Brady Handgun Violence and Prevention Act remains perhaps the most consequential piece of firearms legislation since its passage in 1993. Hopefully, we will see similar legal action in the wake of Trump’s assassination attempt.
NRA still has influence in American politics, for some reason
Despite the calls for increased security around election officials and the desire to send a message of unity to the country, the Republicans don’t seem to be talking about gun violence prevention in any meaningful way. It is hard to separate that from the amount of money they have taken from the National Rifle Association over the years.
In the 2020 election cycle, the NRA donated more than $772,000 to Republican candidates and $13,800 to Democrats ‒ and spent more than $5.4 million lobbying.
Despite recent revelations about the organization’s corruption, for the 2024 election the NRA has already contributed nearly $9,000 in and spent $2.8 million on lobbying.
After this attack on a former U.S. president, I don’t believe that any candidate should take money from the NRA or any pro-gun organization.
Both the assailant in Parkland and the gunman who shot Trump used AR-style rifles that were obtained legally. The correct response would be to ban assault-style weapons. That, in turn, requires filibuster reform so that it will no longer take a supermajority to pass legislation that the majority of senators want.
Despite my beliefs, I’m not really hopeful that legislators will start taking gun violence seriously. Hogg isn’t, either.
“The response, like usual, is probably just going to be more policing,” Hogg said, “which then sells more guns, which then is proven ineffective, which then we decide to spend more money on policing.”
The Democrats, on the other hand, are rolling out their gun safety plans. Recently, Vice President Kamala Harris called for new gun safety legislation in a Milwaukee speech that helped launch her presidential campaign. Soon after, March For Our Lives announced its endorsement of Harris, a first for that organization.
“We will finally pass red flag laws, universal background checks, and an assault weapons ban,” Harris told the crowd.
That’s a good step, but it will take both sides talking about the issue for anything to actually happen.
If Republicans and Democrats are truly appalled at what we saw on July 13, then they will do everything in their power to make our country safer by making it difficult to procure a weapon that almost ended a former president’s life.
Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Sara Pequeño on X, formerly Twitter, @sara__pequeno