Political Terrorism and Access to Guns
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The shooting at the Republican congressional baseball team’s practice Tuesday was the 154th mass shooting in America this year alone. And it wasn’t the only one that day. Lest Americans think the problem has anything to do with the fact that our nation is awash in barely-regulated high-powered firearms, we’ll focus instead on the shooter’s political leanings.
Here’s the thing I can’t get past: Why the selective compassion from our president? Late last year, a young white man drove to Washington, DC with several guns to free imaginary children whom he believed Hillary Clinton had locked in an equally imaginary dungeon under a real pizza shop, and he fired shots inside a family restaurant. Last month, a white supremacist stabbed three people, killing two men, while yelling anti-Muslim rhetoric at young women on a train in Portland. Hate crimes are on the rise across the U.S. since the election of Donald Trump, but he has been publicly silent on these and other outrageous acts against Americans. What’s the message, then, when the president immediately speaks out via his favorite medium, Twitter, to pray for the Republican congressman injured in the shooting? It cannot be understood in any way other than that he accepts and tacitly endorses political violence from his own supporters.
The right-wing media is in attack mode, blaming liberals, the “liberal media” and even the Obama administration for this attack. It seems like the talking points were already written. But the narrative being peddled is concerning, even dangerous. Doesn’t the partisan slander reinforce the divide that has led to so much violence of late? We know that if the shooter were Black or Muslim, we’d be having a different conversation.
Following the 2015 Charleston, South Carolina, assassinations of black parishioners by a white supremacist who had written of wanting to start a race war, mainstream media and law enforcement wondered whether the attacker was mentally ill. Please, just call him a “terrorist.” A few months later, another white man shot and killed three people at a Planned Parenthood office in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial. This happened during the presidential primary and Senator Ted Cruz decried the “vicious rhetoric on the left blaming those who are pro-life.” (Just for fun, Google “Ted Cruz blames Obama.”)
The New America Foundation has an interesting study on terrorism that shows clearly that right-wing attacks outnumber even jihadist terrorist attacks, and that since 2000 there have been only two attacks prior to Tuesday’s Alexandria mass shooting that could be attributed to left wing actors. And yet the narrative is of “vicious rhetoric on the left” and increasing hyper-partisanship that spurs people to violence. The media’s failure to connect one white supremacist terrorist attack with the others like it is contrary to how Islamic terrorists are treated, and arguably, that adds to the sense among a growing number of Americans that they are under more threat from Islamic terrorists than from white nationalists. Wouldn’t that fear then drive more racism and xenophobia, and eventually more violence against the Muslim community? Journalists should be alert, also, to narratives driven on Twitter by the alt-right coalition, and ask themselves why that message is appearing suddenly and widely. As a recent Harvard and MIT study has found, the right-wing media ecosystem is extremely adept at manipulating the mainstream media into picking up its narrative as reporting on a trend. Similarly, Republican politicians read these sources and repeat the same messages about the “wave of liberal rage” that led to “a man gorged on media hysteria” attempting “to slaughter Republican congressmen” (per one of the Daily Caller’s most emailed stories on Friday, 6/15/17).
This is all unfolding as NBC plans to air Megyn Kelly’s interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who calls the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in 2012 a hoax, giving hoards of online trolls permission to harass the parents of children killed in their school. Sandy Hook parents have taken a strong stance against legitimizing Jones through this interview, and word is leaking out of NBC that the interview is being re-edited. One would hope that NBC and Kelly had an epiphany after the Alexandria shooting: Alex Jones contributes mightily to the toxic, violent and now potentially lethal hyper-partisan political climate. Certainly, when we talk about the weaponization of information to manipulate the public, we can’t ignore that this conspiracy theorist named his media company InfoWars.
So let’s get something clear: political terrorists of every stripe take advantage of the easy access to guns that they use to kill, injure and terrorize the American public. The increase in hate- and fear-driven violence is part of a broader descent into a divided nation that cannot empathize with others. If we want to live by the ethos that House Speaker Paul Ryan articulated so passionately last week, “An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” then we must act that way every time. We need empathy for every person murdered because of their gender identity, race, sex, religion, or yes, political ideology.
Republicans have the power to make it harder for domestic abusers like the Alexandria shooter and ISIS-inspired terrorists to get guns and cause this level of destruction. I’ll end with words from the former Arizona congresswoman, mass shooting survivor, and founder of a gun violence prevention group, Gabby Giffords: “May all Americans come together today with prayers for the survivors, love for their friends and family, and the courage to go about everyday making this country its best.” Our best is within our control, America.
