by Jennifer Porter Gore
During his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last week, Donald Trump told a hushed audience that he was alive “by the grace of almighty God” after a would-be assassin took aim at him five days earlier — and barely missed shooting the former president in his head.
Yet even though a bullet creased his right ear in a shooting that killed one bystander, neither Trump nor his party have repented for enabling the proliferation of guns in America.
In fact, the scourge of gun violence, the leading cause of death for Black children in the U.S., didn’t come up at all during Trump’s speech, even though he himself was millimeters away from death by gunfire. And while the attempt on Trump’s life lingered over the GOP convention — several delegates wore bandages over their ears in solidarity with him — guns came up in the official party platform to describe its staunch defense of the Second Amendment.
Put another way: there is no sign the assassination attempt against Trump, a deadly, potentially catastrophic event that could have plunged the nation into chaos, is causing a GOP rethink on guns.
Last week, “Republicans, especially Donald Trump, made it clear they will do nothing to address gun violence,” says Emma Brown, executive director of GIFFORDS, a nonprofit gun violence prevention organization. “Instead, they’re planning to make the country more dangerous by undoing the progress we’ve made,” including plans to roll back a landmark bipartisan law which addresses gun violence in urban communities.
Kris Brown, president of Brady: United Against Gun Violence, doesn’t expect that dynamic to change any time soon — particularly since Republicans refused to act after recent mass shootings that targeted shoppers, worshippers, fellow members of Congress and schoolchildren.
“The recent assassination attempt on former President Trump underscores a troubling pattern: after high-profile incidents of gun violence, our national dialogue fails to progress toward the prevention of future tragedies,” she says.
There is no question the U.S. is awash in guns; while exact numbers are difficult to come by, The Trace, a website covering gun violence, estimates that there are roughly 364 million guns in a country of about 360 million people.
In the past few decades, one state after another loosened gun laws, from eliminating background checks for private-seller gun purchases to allowing people to own guns without a permit. Now, all but four4 states allow adults to openly carry weapons in public — including Pennsylvania, where the attempted assassination took place on July 13.
The trend of loosening firearms laws is “helping to normalize the presence of guns,” saysaccording to The Trace, a website that exclusively covers gun violence. “In many states, because of these concealed carry laws, gatherings with many guns present, including political rallies, aren’t surprising.”
Although violent crime rates have trended down over two decades, the U.S. gun violence epidemic is the number one cause of premature death in the country. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently declared gun violence a public health crisis.
In 2022, more than 48,000 people died from firearm-related deaths, and gun violence is the number one killer of all American youth. Black Americans make up 60% of individuals killed by a firearm each year, and they are 11.5 times more likely to die by firearm homicide than whites.
Gun control advocates are not keeping quiet about the growing need for change, pointing to the bipartisan Safer Communities Act — a landmark bill President Joe Biden signed into law in June 2022.
The Act “included historic funding for community violence intervention programs,” says Giffords’ Emma Brown. In Black and Latino communities beset by gunfire, she says, those programs “have made a notable difference by preventing shootings and interrupting the cycle of violence in the country’s most impacted communities.”
At the same time, the law expanded federal background checks, worked to limit untraceable ghost guns, and closed the background check loophole. But Congress and many state legislatures have ignored Biden’s call to reinstate the assault weapons ban, which would explicitly limit spree shooters’ weapon of choice: the AR-15, the same gun Trump’s would-be assassin used to target him.
“Instead of confronting gun access head on, we continue to see our country backslide on gun safety with harmful policies that increase risk in our communities,” Brady’s Kris Brown says.
“In just the past few months, new vending machines have started selling ammunition like candy in grocery stores across Alabama,” she says. “Texas, and Oklahoma, the Tennessee legislature recently voted to arm teachers after a school shooting that killed six – including three 9-year-old children, and gun industry allies in Congress are leading an effort to roll back an expansion of background checks.”
To make communities safer, she says, “we need leaders who are willing to bring solutions that truly address our nation’s gun problem.”
Given their track record, it’s not surprising the GOP doesn’t have much to say about guns, even after Trump’s close call, Kris Brown says.
“Rather than prioritizing this public health crisis, the RNC’s platform offers no solutions and prioritizes the gun industry’s profits over people’s lives,” sheBrown says. We’ve seen this dynamic play out time and time again in Congress and many Republican-led state legislatures. The lack of concern and action has led to devastating outcomes for communities of color.”