Hannah Meredith Gardner | 16 September 2024
On July 13th 2024, Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt that injured the presidential candidate and 2 bystanders, killing one other. This sent shock waves throughout US and international political circles and brought forward questions about not only the upcoming election but also the United States' political system as a whole. One of these questions is familiar: could this be the watershed moment that makes the public stop and reconsider the rise of political violence, and the role of gun violence in particular?
Two months later, it seems that much of US news and culture has moved on from the moment. It can be argued that this instance of gun violence, like so many in the US, has slid below the horizon of the nation's rapidly moving tides of news and information. It leaves many who watch US politics with a whole new set of questions, including: why does it have to be like this? How could one of the most shocking moments in the nation’s political history lose relevance so quickly? This short article will attempt to explain some of the potential reasons that this event didn’t have the immediate impacts that many expected to see, and why its impact on the November 5th election may be minimal to none.
1. The identity of the shooter
When the shooting first occurred, one of the first questions was: who did it? In the hours between the event and the shooter’s identity being released, conspiracy theories and ideas ran wild online. Was this a Democrat trying to assassinate Trump to stop Project 2025? Was it a Republican that somehow felt slighted by their beloved candidate? Was all of this a false flag by either side to try and win the election? At the end of the day, none of these theories worked out and the answer to “who shot at Donald Trump” was all too familiar to the US public.
The shooter was Thomas Matthew Crooks, a young white man from the area who was described as “quiet” and “ a loner”. At this point, the evidence doesn’t point to a personal or political reason for the target of his violence. His internet history included searches for both Biden and Trump, suggesting that Crooks was more interested in the assassination of an important person in general than Trump specifically. This is the profile of so many US shooters that it can be argued that it made the event feel almost normal. He wasn’t unique or special when it comes to the hundreds of shootings that happen every year, except for the target of his violence.
2. The low death count
Shootings that kill anyone is a tragedy but one must remember that approximately 44,300 people die from gun violence a year in the US, and those numbers are tragic but unsurprising . It takes a lot to break through the US psyche for any extended length of time—and importantly Trump survived.
3. The lack of undecided voters
When considering the impact that this event could have on the election, it is important to think about the state of the US election before the shooting occurred. The divisive nature of the 2024 election means that every vote counts. However, one of the potentially fatal flaws of the two-party system that the US has is that parties tend to become more than just part of the political machine that works within a country and becomes more of an identity, which discourages voting outside of the party.
It can be argued that there aren’t many undecided voters that were going to be swayed one direction or the other by the events of July 13th. Those who were going to vote for Donald Trump were only emboldened and those who were voting for (at the time) Joe Biden weren’t going to change their minds by this event.
4. The prevalence of gun violence
This comes back to the tragic reality of why this shooting didn’t change much in the immediate US political scene: gun violence is normal in the United States. The culture of the US is one where guns are a constant reality and mass shootings occur frequently. For US citizens, the presence of guns and gun violence are simply part of life. Many people simultaneously grow up doing active shooter drills in school and hunting with their families on the weekends, navigating the contradiction of hearing about massacres on the news while seeing their neighbors and family openly carry firearms in the grocery store. It takes massive acts of violence to break through the almost necessary numbness to gun violence that many US citizens live with.
Many will never experience gun violence firsthand, but we are so familiar with it in the news, in our communities, and in the general culture that even the attempted assassination of a former US president won’t last very long in our minds. If we stopped everything every time there was a shooting, we would never move. I’m not defending this, it’s horrific, but it is how many of us live. While a majority want better gun laws that would reduce gun violence in the United States, any shifts in policy face massive systemic roadblocks. Many people, myself included, often feel hopeless when it comes to gun reform and our reactions to the events of July 13th are a reflection of that.
If the horrific shootings at Parkland, Uvalde, Sandy Hook, and the recent shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia can’t hold the attention of the US public for more than a few months, it is understandable that this failed assassination attempt wasn’t going to hold our attention for more than a few weeks.
Keywords: #USPolitics #USElection2024 #GunViolence
Hannah Meredith Gardner is a Lund University master’s student in the Human Rights Studies program. Her focuses are on the intersections of human rights, food, the arts, and colonialism. She is originally from the United States and did her bachelor’s in political science at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.
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