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Susan Young is the Bangor Daily News opinion editor.
Last weekend’s assassination attempt against Donald Trump was shocking and horrifying. The former president was grazed in the ear during a rally in Pennsylvania. A rally attendee was killed and two others were seriously injured.
The shooting raises many questions about security at the rally, especially the Secret Service’s handling of warnings of a shooter on the roof of a building near the fairgrounds where the rally was held. There are also many unanswered questions about the motive of the 20-year-old shooter, who was killed by a Secret Service sniper.
What is already clear is that this terrible event is another reminder of the horrific toll of gun violence in America. Violent political rhetoric is a problem, inadequate mental health services are a problem. But, at its core, America’s pandemic of violence is about guns, particularly easy access to high-powered guns and endless ammunition.
An attempt to end the life of a former president is shocking and vile. But, in addition to that, the everyday toll of gun violence in America should also shock us. Bullets should not be used to settle political differences. Nor should they be used to terrorize — and kill — school children, grocery shoppers, concertgoers and tens of thousands of other Americans every year.
Less than a month before Saturday’s assassination attempt against Trump, the U.S. surgeon general issued a historic advisory, calling gun violence a public health crisis. Such advisories are pretty rare and meant to draw attention to public health concerns and to prompt action. A report from the surgeon general in 1964 is credited with drawing attention to the dangers of smoking, which led to a reduction in tobacco use and regulation of the tobacco industry.
“People want to be able to walk through their neighborhoods and be safe,” the surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, told The Associated Press in a phone interview in late June. “America should be a place where all of us can go to school, go to work, go to the supermarket, go to our house of worship, without having to worry that that’s going to put our life at risk.” Sadly, “attend a political rally” is now also on the list.
The statistics in the advisory are staggering. More than half of American adults say they or a family member have experienced firearm violence. Six in 10 Americans say they worry about a loved one being a victim of firearm violence, and half worry about a school shooting.
In 2020, firearms became the leading cause of death for American children and teenagers, overtaking motor vehicle accidents.
Gun-related deaths are on the rise. In 2022, 48,204 total people died from firearm‑related injuries. That’s 8,000 more lives lost than in 2019 and more than 16,000 than those lives lost in 2010.
In the decade between 2010 and 2020, firearm-related suicides rose by 20 percent. Most troubling, there was a 68 percent rise in these deaths among children aged 10 to 14.
In 2015, the overall firearm-related death rate was more than 11 times higher in the U.S. than in 28 other high-income nations.
Why do we allow this to continue? Sure, America’s Second Amendment is unique in ensuring a right to gun ownership. But that right has never been absolute.
The Second Amendment, we’re often told, guarantees our freedom. But we don’t feel really free when 6 in 10 American adults worry about gun violence. We’re not free when presidential candidates are being shot at. We’re not free when horrifying, and increasing, numbers of Americans are ending their lives with guns.
Other countries, like Canada and Australia, don’t live with these heightened fears. We don’t have to either.
There is no one answer to reducing gun violence, but Murthy lays out many concrete steps to take. Some, like a national ban on assault weapons, require action from Congress, which is often stymied by partisanship. But congressional action is possible, as we saw after the terrible massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. After the 2022 school shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead, Congress passed modest gun reforms, including enhanced background checks for people under 21 and funding to state for red flag laws.
After the country’s most deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2018, the Trump administration quickly moved to ban bump stocks, which essentially turn semi-automatic weapons into automatic ones, increasing the carnage of mass shootings. That ban was recently struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority based on highly technical, and I think dubious, rationale. As Justice Samuel Alito noted, Congress can act to reinstate such a ban. They certainly should.
Americans were horrified by the violence that targeted Trump last weekend. They are also horrified by the scourge of gun violence and broadly support efforts to reduce it. All that is missing is leadership, something the former president, as a survivor of gun violence, could provide, if he chose to do so.
