The American reaction to a lone gunman's botched assassination attempt on Donald Trump has been surreal denialism. The most delusional of these denials? "There is no place for political violence in America." Ironically and historically, there is, riddled with brutal examples. Successful or failed assassinations against aspiring, sitting, or former American presidents or eminent political leaders have been dictated by historical precedents that still haunt their pop culture and literature.
Consider Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X—just a few of the famously assassinated. Ronald Reagan survived a bullet wound, and now Trump parades his clipped ear. These murders overlap with the most savage of American manifestations: mass shootings in schools, shopping malls, and nightspots. The grim statistics are abnormally high. This year alone, 10,000 people have been killed and 19,000 injured. But why?
It's never satisfactorily clarified, only that crazed gunmen kill until they are shot dead in their tracks. Some plausible hypotheses: America suffers from a multiple personality disorder; a sizeable populace is considered sociopathic, mentally ill, and inflicted with psychosis. An oversimplification, admittedly, but perseverance to temper runaway mass shooters is hobbled by highly organized gun advocates who unconscionably insist that more mass shootings mean the need for more guns.
The working class is cruelly bullied in schools, neighborhoods, and workplaces, threatened with firings if they fail tight productivity schedules while enduring harsh socio-economic policies and environments. Subsidized healthcare and education, which we take for granted, are illusions for most Americans. Then there's the greed: it's un-American for corporations and wealthy individuals not to make a buck, unless it's in the billions, salved by a system that rakes in obscene profits—tax-free.
As for the corruption, it's so rampant that it's legal: corporations openly buy or sponsor preferred politicians through massive campaign contributions. Worse, a few Supreme Court justices were recently exposed for accepting luxury inducements in lieu of favorable judgments—with impunity. This trinity of legalized cruelty, greed, and corruption seems to make Americans lose their minds, some demented enough to barbarously take it out on fellow citizens.
Still, gun-loving Americans banal truism is that "guns don't kill people, people kill people," a grievously accurate assessment, except that it's easier to kill with over-the-counter automatic assault rifles and machine guns. That's why you don't read of mass knifings or vehicular rampages in America, unless it's in Britain. American veneration for the constitutional right to bear arms is holy scripture, governed by a perverse political will that snubs sensible gun control, insane when citizens gunned down weekly can't even stir the conscience.
Gun abuse milked by the deranged will continue to be a numbing American nightmare as bodies perpetually pile up while their lawmakers butt heads over gun control.