There’s only one right response to the Trump shooting

Helen Ubinas, Tribune News Service

I was boarding a plane from Los Angeles back home to Philadelphia when the news hit that former President Donald Trump had been injured during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The details were sketchy, but the responses online and on the plane were already wild — and entirely predictable. This is precisely the kind of thing that’s juicy fodder for the social media chaos machine: Take an event about which we know little, and watch the flags unfurl.

“Someone just attempted to assassinate Trump!” one passenger said as I scrolled through X. (I was waiting for full details.) “Did they get him?” another passenger asked as X posters began already declaring Trump — dead or alive — a hero. (It appeared that whatever it was had hit him in the ear.) “He’s dead?” (Again, he was not.) In fact, not long after the incident, Trump’s campaign said in a statement that he was “fine” after being rushed off the stage after gunshots rang out. Later reports said one rally attendee was killed, two other spectators were critically wounded, and the alleged shooter was dead. An AR-style rifle — you know, the kind used in mass killings including that of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, and 10 Black shoppers at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York — was recovered at the scene.

After the shooting, though, most of the responses focused strictly on Trump, and regardless of the poster’s politics, it was not our finest moment. Opponents bemoaned that it was a failed attempt: “You had one job...” Supporters, meanwhile, took the opportunity to declare their man indestructible, all but guaranteed reelection in November. But not so fast.

I am, and will continue to be, a vocal opponent of Trump and his vile and ongoing violent rhetoric, including the kind that led to the assault on the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But the only response here isn’t to make Trump a god or a goat: It is to declare, once and for all, that we will finally stop pledging our allegiance to guns more than to one another. Each day in the United States, upward of 200 people are wounded by guns and more than 110 are killed, according to Everytown for Gun Safety. Any other response from anyone who wants to lead our country is not just unacceptable but should be grounds for considering them unfit to lead.

As I write this, Trump posted on Truth Social his gratitude for law enforcement officers and expressed his condolences for the person who was killed and those injured. “I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear,” he wrote. “I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

I feel beyond ridiculous hoping that this incident might change the heart and mind of a man who just last year said mass shootings are not “a gun problem” as he and other would-be GOP presidential nominees pledged loyalty to the National Rifle Association. In fact, he vowed to defend and expand gun-owner rights in his May keynote speech to the NRA’s annual meeting. “I was proud to be the most pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment president you’ve ever had in the White House,” Trump said to an audience that leapt to its feet, cheered, and chanted “U-S-A” when he was introduced. “And with your support in 2024, I will be your loyal friend and fearless champion once again as the 47th president of the United States.”

Moments after Saturday’s attack, bipartisan responses rightly condemned the shooting. President Joe Biden, who said he’d tried to reach Trump, said there was “no place in America for this kind of violence. It’s sick... it’s sick. It’s one of the reasons why we have to unite this country. We cannot allow this to be happening. We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this.”

And yet, we do — every single day in every single corner of this country.

Biden’s remarks were brief, and almost pitch perfect in a moment that was still unfolding. “The idea that there is political violence or violence in America like this is just unheard of, is just not appropriate,” he said. “Everybody, everybody must condemn it.”

Of all the comments pouring in after the shooting, what grabbed my attention came from former Democrat US Rep. Gabby Giffords, whose life was forever changed after a 2011 assassination attempt that killed six people and left her partly paralyzed and unable to speak fluently. “Political violence is terrifying. I know,” she said. “I’m holding former President Trump, and all those affected by today’s indefensible act of violence in my heart. Political violence is un-American and is never acceptable — never.”

Until this moment, the trajectory of this presidential campaign has been nothing short of horrifying on many levels — and that includes today. It is beyond tragic that an audience member, exercising their right to support their chosen candidate, lost their life. But today, if we are talking about anything other than ending gun violence in this country, we are simply lying in wait for the next horror.