All the Guns Are King
And all the unborn to Presidents merely (potential) victims
Even as I write this, more details of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump are filtering down to the public and media as a whole. Some of the initial reactions I have received from my friends have varied from “This makes him a martyr — he’s winning in the Fall” (if so, he’s a poor example, as political martyrs tend to die for their beliefs) to “this might be one of the few times those in favor of gun control don’t make the argument so vehemently” (so far the declarations I’ve seen in the news are more for a call of civility in the public and political sphere, a sentiment that generally lasts for a fleeting moment; I mean, is there really any outcry left from what happened to Gabby Giffords or Steve Scalise?)
If nothing else, the incident won’t make any of Trump’s hardcore supporters sway to the gun control side. The reality is that for many, the gun has been, is, and will remain the true king of America.
You don’t believe me? Supposedly the most sacred of lives are the unborn, with one popular billboard phrase being “Abortion stops a beating heart.” A fired bullet from a gun can very much do that and in a far more quick and unregulated manner; such as instances in Harrisburg, PA; Norwalk, OH; Nashville, TN; or Indianapolis, IN.
Supposedly motherhood is the most sacred and important job a woman can do, yet there are hundreds of cases where that role is terminated by someone with a gun, as in Tinley Park, IL; Oklahoma City, OK; Clarkstown, NY; or Miami, FL.
Church is the inner sanctum where one can commune with God, but the gun is the item this society really worships when it comes down to it, as shown in Sutherland Springs, TX; Pittsburgh, PA; Oak Creek, WI; or Charleston, SC.
Many say a good guy with a gun is the best defense against a bad guy with a gun, but in reality, it’s a good guy (or gal) with a computer with strong intel who actually acts on the known information, such as thwarted attempts at mass shootings in Atlanta, GA; Rockville, MD; Yellowstone National Park, WY; and Ontario, CA.
And yet this phrase continues on as if by rote and it were fact as if Hollywood-styled gunfights where only the bad guys are offed happened in everyday real life. In reality, the good guy with a gun is often too late to stop the carnage (Stephen Willeford, who fired six shots into the gunman (Devin Kelley) at the Sutherland Springs church massacre but only got him to run off because Kelley was wearing body armor), kills an innocent bystander, or does nothing to try to stop the carnage. And in some cases, the ultimate hero has no gun at all, such as Richard Fierro, who tackled the gunman at the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando and subdued him, but only after 99 people were killed or wounded.
God and Jesus Christ are supposed to be all-powerful, with the ability to rise from and raise the dead, walk on water, turn a mere number of fishes and loaves into enough to feed a small army, and send all manner of plagues upon on this world with a mere gesture. Yet, somehow some believe the Savior would be even more awesome and more powerful with an assault rifle in His grasp. Just Google “Jesus with a rifle” and you get all these wonderful images and more (I guess Jesus loves us all, especially if He’s pumped you full of ammunition.)
And even if Trump’s assailant were found to be the most cartoony Communist-leaning, transgender, feminist, multiple-pronoun liberalista around, the right to own a gun would still be sacrosanct. Why let the nature of the assassin disqualify overall Second Amendment rights for anyone no matter their age, gender, mental health, or political stance? Even if you are someone who would fail a background check in purchasing a gun, there are ways around that.
And who cares if prominent, even beloved politicians like Abraham Lincoln, Anton Cernak (who took a bullet meant for President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt), James A. Garfield, John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, Harvey Milk and George Moscone, John Roll, Huey Long and William McKinley have met their premature ends with a bullet? The purity of the Second Amendment is the ultimate golden rule, over mere Bible admonitions like loving your neighbor as much as you love Jesus Christ. And never mind the fact that most other Bill of Rights Amendments have received their own restrictions (the First Amendment declaration that Freedom of Speech shall not be “abridged” is indeed abridged by laws forbidding defamation, slander, and libel for instance.)
With all that established, perhaps the real question is this: does Donald Trump’s near brush with an assassin’s bullet make you angrier than actual deaths of hundreds of children in Uvalde, Parkland, or other highly publicized and tragic incidents like Columbine, Blacksburg, and Sandy Hook? If allowing teachers to be armed and children to wear body armor is supposed good enough for our youth, why should ANY adult, including Trump, expect any better?
Does the Trump incident make you angrier than the fact that 60 people were gunned down and 850 injured during the Highway 91 Festival mass shooting in Las Vegas, NV? Or angrier than the fact that 46 people were either killed or wounded by a gunman at an El Paso, Texas Wal-Mart in 2019?
Or does Trump’s bloody ear make you angrier than the Incident where eight Asian-American women were shot to death in spas in Atlanta by a man who claimed that his “addiction to sex” and not racial bias (neither of which are good reasons to shoot innocent people) caused him to act out with bullets?
Does the attempt on a man who is still very much alive elicit more pity and rage in you than the thousands who have met their ends via a bullet in this country in the past four decades? The report from the US Department of Justice only covers 28 years from 1980–2008, but the graphic below from the report detailing the number of homicides from handguns and other guns pretty much says it all.
While perhaps his most hardcore supporters won’t see it this way, the reality is Trump (no matter what his ego may tell him) is just one of the crowd who can be felled by a bullet at a moment’s notice. Because even he, as worshipped as he is, is secondary to the gun and the meaning given to its concept and ownership.
Maybe Trump can shoot a guy on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters, as he brazenly declared during the 2016 election campaign, but he is as eligible to be gunned down as those faceless, nameless Chicago residents who end up victims of gun violence and who he loves to bring up in speeches every moment he can.
If the deaths of the unborn, children and school students, mothers, church-goers, or even the President himself by gun-wielders haven’t done anything to move the needle substantially in terms of how guns are perceived as sacrosanct, why should Trump be considered any differently? Why shouldn’t Trump hold the same status as the victims of the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde, TX, whose lives were ultimately ended by a man who in the span of roughly one week bought two guns after his 18th birthday and decided that shooting elementary school kids would be his ultimate blaze of glory?
Sadly, buried in the avalanche of articles on the attempted Trump assassination is one of another mass shooting, this time at an adult birthday party in Birmingham, AL, which at the time of this article has left 13 people either dead or wounded. But surely as in the past, any sadness the public has for this will disappear from the collective public consciousness because, in the end, the gun will remain firmly on this nation’s throne of worship, as admired as it ever was and seemingly ever will be.
