OP-ED | Assassination Attempts – What’s Wrong With This Picture?

In the five-year span from 1963 to 1968, like everyone of my generation, I saw the assassinations of Medgar Evers, John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. My young mind naturally linked them all to Abraham Lincoln, whom every American child was taught was both heroic and tragic. So no, I’m not shocked by the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

What does shock me is the collective political amnesia currently on display. Every single time there is gun violence in this country, Republican politicians chalk it up to a combination of personal freedom and bad luck. But now that one of their own has been nicked in the ear, it’s proof of monumental “evil” abroad in the land.

Democrats, too, seem to have lost some perspective here. In their attempt to bridge the partisan rhetoric divide, Democrats at all levels of government have sent their version of “thoughts and prayers” to the former president. Decorously, Dems are choosing to focus only on the violence aimed at Trump; most are choosing not to draw any parallels, setting aside (at least for now) commentary on their wider gun-control agenda.

Clearly, an assassination attempt and an assassination are not the same. But largely missing from the current condemnation of all forms of political violence is an honest discussion about guns — the method of carrying out assassinations against presidents Lincoln (1865), Garfield (1881), McKinley (1901), and Kennedy (1963), as well as numerous unsuccessful assassination attempts made on other sitting presidents and candidates, from Andrew Jackson (1835) to Donald Trump last week.

Is it really a surprise that guns are the favored implementation of destruction among would-be assassins? Is it really a surprise that violence begets violence? That it never has been the path to correcting anything? And yet, turning to violence to solve problems is absolutely not, as Joe Biden said, “unthinkable” or “un-American.” On the contrary, it’s more American than baseball or apple pie or any other trite icon could ever be.

What this moment is really about is social media opportunism. When Trump popped back up after ducking behind the stage, his words were, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

How different from that moment in June 1968, when the mortally wounded Senator Robert Kennedy lay on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel after shaking hands with the kitchen staff. As busboy Juan Romero cradled Kennedy’s bleeding head, the would-be president asked him, “Is everyone OK? Is everyone OK?”

LIFE Magazine Photographer Bill Eppridge immortalized the moment in a hastily shot (but still beautifully composed) black-and-white photo of Romero bent beside RFK, whose arms were spread out, as if he were making a snow angel on some dark gray drift.

But of course that was in a far more reflective time. It is deeply distressing to watch the political theater now taking center stage. Instead of engaging in some serious individual and collective soul-searching about American violence, we are now a nation of “memes.” Before the blood had dried on his cheek, Trump’s supporters began reveling in their candidate’s show of bravado — using the fist-bump photo as their own profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and the like. Connecticut GOP Party Chair Ben Proto reportedly said at the Convention that the image “may be the best political poster ever.” Some of his acolytes are revving up for his “Revenge Tour.”

And yes, some on the Left have responded with their own memes which make a mockery of the incident. Now, from both sides, everything is loud. There are loud cries blaming Democrats for “demonizing” Trump. There are loud accusations that the Secret Service failed.There are loud cries of disbelief. And there loud calls for national unity.

But to me, the only voices that should be loud in this moment are those of all the parents who lost children in the Sandy Hook massacre or in any of the mass shootings happening almost daily across the nation. I want to hear from the children who’ve lost mothers to domestic gun violence. From the pastors whose praying congregants were riddled with bullets. From teachers traumatized by lock-down drills. From urban parents whose sons were killed in gang wars. From teenagers whose big sisters never made it home from that nightclub.

Those are the only voices I want to hear from right now.

Unless, of course, there are members of Congress who have suddenly found their voice and are, finally, ready to pass laws to protect all Americans from gun violence? Nah, I didn’t think so.

In the aftermath of RFK’s death, on June 14, 1968, LIFE Magazine asked: “How many times must we live through these throat-paralyzing sequences of days of gun play, grief and muffled drums?”

How many, indeed. I call upon my Republican colleagues to put their shock over Trump’s brush with death to good use: stop blaming “rhetoric” and start blaming guns. Instead of talking about national unity, manifest it: join Democrats in passing meaningful national gun laws now.