Editorial: Trump dodges bullet time

WASHINGTON: In yet another ‘saved by a whisker’ moment for Donald Trump, the US former President escaped an apparent assassination attempt while golfing in Florida, a second bid on his life in two months. In July, a life-threatening attack on Trump during his rally in Pennsylvania had shocked the nation. Political observers had surmised back then that the attack might possibly swing the sympathy vote of the American electorate towards Trump. Now that a second attempt on Trump’s life has been foiled, questions regarding the poll security situation in the US have emerged.

Trump is an advocate of protecting the Second Amendment (right to bear arms). Back in May, he had urged gun owners to vote while addressing thousands of members of the National Rifle Association, which officially endorsed him. The billionaire had trained his guns at President Biden by saying if the Democrats “get four more years, they will rip firearms out of the hands of law-abiding citizens.” The Biden administration had introduced several initiatives to combat gun violence, including a new rule that closes a loophole that allows guns to be sold by unlicensed dealers who do not perform background checks. Before Biden stepped down from the presidential race, he had made curtailing gun violence a major part of his administration and reelection campaign, creating the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention overseen by Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden had also urged Congress to ban so-called assault weapons something Democrats shied from even just a few years ago.

A recent report by BBC detailed the human cost of lax gun control in the US. So far this year, over 385 mass shootings have been reported across the US, per the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are injured or killed. For each of the last four years there have been more than 600 mass shootings almost two a day on average. Last year ended with 217 deaths from 42 mass killings, which made 2023 one of the deadliest years on record in the country.

The number of shooting incidents is in line with gun ownership in the country. A Swiss-based research project called the Small Arms Survey pegged the number of guns in circulation in the US in 2018 to be 390 million. The US ratio as of now stands at 120.5 firearms per 100 residents, which is up from 88 per 100 in 2011, and is much higher than that of other countries. Following Sunday’s episode, Democrats zeroed in on the issue of gun control, demanding how the potential assassin with a criminal record had no hurdles in obtaining an AK-47 (Kalashnikov).

There is an irony in the way things are panning out for Trump with regard to gun laws. During his presidency, Trump would occasionally offer pledges to strengthen firearm ownership norms. The high school mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, which claimed 17 lives prompted the former President to reconsider stronger background checks, claiming he would stand up to the NRA. Later he pussyfooted around the issue, owing to “not much political support.” It might be presumptuous to believe that this latest episode is a blessing in disguise, prompting lawmakers to take the issue of gun control seriously. As the late actor Charlton Heston, a former NRA president once said, “I’ll give you my gun when you pry (or take) it from my cold, dead hands.”