"Second Amendment People"
People have been calling for political violence. And they aren't Democrats.
Image: “BAN GUNS & SAVE LIVES,” on a “no guns” sign depicting what looks to be a high-capacity rifle.
Summary:
1. Leading GOP politicians, including former President Trump, have encouraged political assassination for years.
2. Biden had nothing to do with the assassination attempt on Trump, but if he had, the GOP Supreme Court authorized him to with their recent ruling on presidential immunity from prosecution for official acts.
3. The GOP has blocked attempts to restrict guns and prevent gun violence at every governmental level and at every step.
4. The GOP created this reality, and Democrats need to make them own it.
I’m sorry someone tried to shoot the former president. I’m sorry they succeeded in killing someone else, I’m sorry the shooter died in the attempt, and I don’t fault the Secret Service for killing him.
And I’m worried that Trump’s terrorist collaborators — official and unofficial, organized and unaffiliated — will seek retribution.*
Hopefully I worry needlessly.
This is a good time for the GOP to step back from its chronic and ongoing calls for political violence. On August 9, 2016, while campaigning against Hillary Clinton for the presidency, Trump said, “"If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don't know."
Trump is not the only GOP to call on his supporters to assassinate their opponents. While unsuccessfully campaigning as the GOP Senate candidate from Pennsylvania, Dr. Mehmet Oz said, “Our Second Amendment is about our Constitutional right to protect ourselves from an overly intrusive government” — a statement alarming not only for its violence but for its ignorance.
In 1994, Jesse Helms, then the notoriously reactionary Senator from North Carolina, said about the then-president, “Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard.”
GOP politicians hinting at the need or desirability of assassinating political rivals is not new.
Now would be a good time for them to repudiate such reckless and destructive rhetoric.
Meanwhile, the usual chorus of GOP shriekers, whiners, bootlickers, and snivvelers are “blaming Biden” for the assassination attempt against Trump. Congressional representatives Mike Collins, Steve Scalise, and Marjorie Taylor Greene and senators Rick Scott, Tim Scott, and JD Vance have called President Biden to account, accusing him that his calling Trump a threat to US democracy and liberals calling Trump a fascist instigated the assassination attempt.
Here’s what they need to understand. Biden didn’t have anything to do with the assassination attempt, but if he had, the Supreme Court pre-exonerated him. He would be immune from prosecution for ordering an assassination of Trump, or anybody.
The GOP created this world and they cheered its emergence onto our landscape. They need to own it and quit whining.
I call on every Democratic politician on the campaign trail to hang these realities around the necks of their GOP rivals. If the GOP doesn’t like it they can join us in denouncing the, yes, the threat to US democracy that their Supreme Court appointees are enacting.
Former President Trump showed excellent theatrical ( / televisual) instincts when he raised his fist and shouted “Fight!” as he was being escorted to safety. Such a display makes for good drama. People are sick of the drama and the chaos that beclouds him everywhere he goes like Pigpen’s dust. And yes, Mr. Former President, we are going to fight to keep you from inflicting that chaos on our country from the White House — fight nonviolently — and we are going to win.
A NOTE and the Sources.
* Note: That’s the thing about terrorism. It’s terrifying. And, no mistake, between mass-shootings inspired by GOP rhetoric — from Highland Park, IL, to Buffalo, NY — and the GOP’s insistence at every level of government that school shootings and high murder rates are the price we have to pay for their obeisance to an a-historical and illiterate interpretation of the Second Amendment, we live in a country that’s deeply traumatized by GOP-sponsored terrorism.
Source: Then-Senator Helms threatens then-President Clinton in 1994.
Source: Trump encourages allies to assassinate Hillary Clinton.
Source: GOP politicians blame Biden and the Democrats for the attempted assassination of Trump.
Source: I lifted the "Ban Guns & Save Lives" image at the top from a sticker shop.