The attack on Donald Trump

Not an hour after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, J.D. Vance already knew who was to blame: Democrats. "The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs," Vance wrote on X. "That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination." Vance, a former never-Trumper now reborn Trumpier-than-thou, was rewarded for this unjustified allegation with the nomination for the vice presidency. But he wasn't the only one to leap to conclusions. Democrats and Republicans alike urged an end to political vitriol, taking as read that the apocalyptic rhetoric around the election had spurred the shooter to violence. 

In fact, we don't know why Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed up to a rooftop in Butler, Pennsylvania, a town about an hour away from his home, to shoot Trump. But we are all far too familiar with this type of perpetrator: a white male loner who was bullied in high school and had easy access to guns. It's the profile of nearly every school shooter. The motives of these young men are a mix of suicidal mental illness, rage, and a desire to finally be seen. Killing children gets you noticed; imagine the attention you'd receive for murdering the former — and possibly future — leader of the free world and igniting massive domestic unrest. But there's a striking difference between this event and an "ordinary" school shooting. This time, our civic leaders and pundits are putting the blame on media and politicians, on the language they use, rather than where it belongs: on a society sick with guns. America leads the world in mass shootings because America leads the world in civilian ownership of weapons of war. We have nearly 400 million guns in private hands, including 20 million AR-15s, and very little regulation over who can use them. To people in other countries, these statistics are scarcely credible. If we are to end the carnage, it's not simply our rhetoric that needs to change. It's our gun laws.

This is the editor's letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.