The Attempt on Trump's Life Is Symptomatic of a Deeper Malaise in American Society
Why did a young man attempt to kill Donald Trump last week? The most consoling answer is to say that it was a freakish, once-off tragedy - a disturbed young man, whose actions were totally unrelated to surrounding social developments. But this is not an especially plausible assessment. While the assassin’s actions cannot be excused or blamed on social factors, they occurred within a particular social context, marred by a rising number of public shootings, many perpetrated by young men, as well as ever more intense political polarisation.
The FBI collects data on “active shooter incidents,” which it defines as “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.” The FBI, as reported by the Pew Research Center, found a substantial increase in active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2021. There were three such incidents in 2000. By 2021, that figure had increased to 61, as shown in the graph below.
Gun violence is a very controversial topic in the United States, but it is undeniably a scourge on American society. One answer, generally favoured more by Democrats than Republicans, is to ban or heavily restrict gun licenses. But even if more restrictions on gun licenses had some impact on the incidence of gun violence (how much impact is a complex and debatable question), restricting gun licenses would not address the problem of illegal arms, and would certainly not address the social and moral pathology that is driving gun violence in the United States.
Sadly, what happened last week in Butler, Pennslyvania, though it received huge international coverage because of who the target was, was not an isolated incident, given the steady increase in active shooter incidents in the United States over the past two decades. We cannot address the problem of gun violence, be it against a presidential candidate, a school, or a workplace, until we come to grips with the fact that it is not just about the availability of arms, but about a moral sickness that is somehow taking root in American society.
Of course, we should not make crass generalisations about why individuals engage in violent behaviour. However, it is interesting to note that Trump’s would-be assassin was male and was described by his classmates as socially marginalised and unable or unwilling to make meaningful connections with his peers.
He was described by classmates at Bethel Park High School as smart but standoffish, often seen wearing headphones and preferring to sit alone at lunch looking at his phone. Some said he was often mocked by other students for the clothes he wore, which included hunting outfits, and for continuing to wear a mask after the COVID pandemic was over.
As this FBI study suggests, there is a wide range of factors that may come into play when people open fire on innocents, including mental health problems, interpersonal grievances, difficulties relating to others, drug use, and difficult family backgrounds. But we do not need an FBI study to understand that a steady increase in public shootings is a clear warning sign that a society is morally sick.
I do not mean by this that there is a very high proportion of individuals in the United States prepared to shoot innocent people. Rather, I mean that the steady increase in gun violence does not come out of nowhere: there must be something about the social atmosphere in which these individuals grow up that fails to offer any effective antidote to the cancer of gun violence.
Why might this be? Could it be the sky-high divorce rates, the breakdown of family bonds, or the growth in drug and alcohol addiction? Could it be the tendency of young people to forge their identity in online interactions instead of real-world interactions or the explosion of online entertainment at the cost of in-person interactions? Or might it be the contempt for human life in its most innocent and fragile manifestations that we see in a culture that tolerates relatively unrestricted abortion? Or the decline in religious practice? Or perhaps a combination of all of these factors?
However we might explain the growth in gun violence in the United States, no serious discussion of the attempt on Trump’s life can afford to ignore the fact that this particular act of violence, however “sensational,” is part of a broader tendency to inflict violence on others in public settings, whether schools, universities, or election rallies. Sadly, until the pathology of gun violence is diagnosed and treated in a serious way, not merely as a law enforcement problem, but also as a social and moral sickness, we can expect the public shootings to continue.
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