Bunch: We can't handle the truth about the real reason Donald Trump was shot

[Nevilledog]

https://www.inquirer.com/columnists/attytood/trump-shooting-young-american-men-crisis-20240723.html

No paywall link
https://archive.li/WGyue


The drops of blood from Donald Trump’s grazed right ear hadn’t yet been cleaned up from the July 13 Butler, Pa. assassination attempt on the GOP presidential candidate when Republicans reached a consensus opinion on who was to blame for the shooting that also killed a spectator and injured two others.

“They” did it.

“They literally shot him!” JD Vance, Trump’s newly minted vice presidential running mate, told his very first campaign appearance in Milwaukee, echoing earlier, similar comments by the likes of Donald Trump Jr. and others. No one needed to elaborate on their preferred pronoun because everyone in the target audience of right-wingers can hear the dog whistle about the elite urban Democrats and the fellow-traveler journalists out to take down Trump and the common folk who vote for him.

Never mind that the authorities in western Pennsylvania quickly established that the lone gunman on a Butler rooftop was a “he”: Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, recent graduate of Bethel Park High School, a registered Republican whose high school friends said he voiced conservative views in class discussions.

But let’s be honest: Political assassinations are bound to be politicized — by all sides. Democrats shellshocked by the Butler events seized not only on the shooter’s GOP registration but also his use of a high-powered AR rifle. The critics on the left are not wrong when they call for stricter gun controls, including a ban on assault rifles similar to one that was in place for a decade before 2004, and restrictions on what weaponry a 20-year-old can purchase. Yet it’s unlikely any new laws would have stopped Crooks from getting the rifle his dad had purchased 11 years ago.

*snip*

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. In maga culture "they did it" can mean "Deep State" or "alphabet agencies" (FBI, CIA, NSA, BATF, EPA, etc.) . . . nt

[Think. Again.]

2. republican-on-republican violence is none of my business.

[barbaraann]

3. "...unlikely any new laws would have stopped Crooks from getting the rifle..."

That is sloppy "reasoning." Open Carry was a big factor.

Pennsylvania is an open carry state (except for the city of Philadelphia). This means, once you buy your gun, you can carry it openly (on your hip, or across your shoulder) without any additional license.
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[sanatanadharma]

4. New laws are not for eleven years ago, they are for eleven years from now

Start now, and year after year, repeat, guns are bad, some are banned, none are what gunners claim they are.
Fighting the scourge of 'guns being wrapped up with self-identity' will take laws, education, reprobation, and time.