“Zero Fail” Failed

 

“Zero Fail” Failed

Will post-assassination-attempt America be 9/11/01 or 1/6/21?

"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.” 

Donald Trump after the shooting.

“Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath. That’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.” 

Trump at a March Rally in Ohio.

“Today is not just some isolated incident… The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” 

J.D. Vance (R-Ohio, Senator and Trump VP finalist) on social media.

“Biden sent the orders.” 

Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), minutes after the shooting, demanding that Biden be prosecuted

“There’s no place in America for this kind of violence, or any violence for that matter.”

Joe Biden, who subsequently had a “good call” with Donald Trump.

The United States has always been a democracy tempered by the gun. While duels in Europe had a history of using swords, ours began with duels with pistols. Hamilton vs Burr, anyone? Our Wild Wild West? When folks begin believing someone is taking their rights away, first there’s the vitriol – today “fascists” vs “vermin” – then a massive choosing sides/heels digging-in, and, often triggered by a “precipitating incident”– usually someone symbolic being killed or almost killed, followed by mass angry protests or, if they have had time to organize, violence that has elevated into civil war in this nation. Vietnam War protests, Tulsa slaughter, Black Lives Matter, Charlottesville, January 6th and the dozens and dozens of American political figures who were assassinated or almost assassinated. Presidents who faced an assassin’s firearm/explosives: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, Ford, Reagan, & GW Bush. Presidential candidates include: T, Roosevelt, Rbt. Kennedy, G. Wallace, Trump. Assassinations of controversial political figures, like Martin Luther King, are too numerous to mention in full.

Our political system has unraveled, and how our economy stands as strong as it is still amazes foreign leaders. Our Second Amendment was enacted in 1789 as a right of citizen soldiers to keep their firearms during peacetime (the era of flintlocks and muskets), but beginning in 2008 through a series of baffling Supreme Court decisions that twisted the plain meaning of that amendment into a ubiquitous right for Americans to own and carry arms, even semiautomatic assault weapons, like the one of approximately 30 million currently in the hands of American civilians. Including the legally purchased AR-15 (by purported Trump’s shooter’s father) that killed a firefighter at that July 13th Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, who threw his body to protect is family, critically injured two more and almost assassinated ex-President Trump.

The most probable shooter, apparently using his father’s AR-15, was man-child Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, able to vote in his first presidential election. Stories abounded that Crooks had been bullied in school, that his car also contained explosives, that he had donated $15 in 2021 to Democratic PAC but was currently a registered Republican. The shooter was able to access a rooftop with a clear shot at the rally, somewhere between 150 and 200 yards from Trump’s podium, using a weapon that our most of our Army and Marine soldiers are able to use to hit small targets at 300 yards. Yet the Secret Service vow of “zero fail” when it comes to protecting the president… failed.

“The Secret Service, in a statement, said that a shooter ‘fired multiple shots toward the stage from an elevated position outside of the rally venue’ after which agents ‘neutralized the shooter, who is now deceased.’… The shooter fired as many as eight rounds from an AR-style rifle while perched on a rooftop adjacent to the venue and was 200-300 yards away at the time of the shooting, law enforcement sources told ABC News.” ABC News, July 14th.

The rooftop position was exceptionally well-situated for a shooter at an outdoor rally. While outside the zone of security, it was an obvious point of vulnerability. As a bleeding Trump was hustled by Secret Service deputies, he fist-pumped at the podium and as he was placed in the vehicle that took him to a nearby hospital. Had there been a second shooter, that rising to fire, that fist-pump would probably have cost Trump his life. Instead, it could win him the election. Could a 20-year-old would be assassin be responsible for ending American Democracy?

Trump could defuse this cauldron of hate in this nomination acceptance speech, or he could use it to lambast his opponents. 9/11 brought us together as a nation. Democrats and Republicans became Americans. January 6th only reinforced the “us versus them” battle cry. Right now, Trump’s fist-pump after being shot gives him a huge, almost insurmountable lead for the November election. It is his to win.

But those AR-15-like weapons, subject to an unchallenged federal assault-weapons ban from 1994 through 2004, are clearly the firearm of choice for mass shooters and political disruptors. With guns now being the leading cause of death among children and teens, isn’t it time that the United States – the only developed nation on earth with so many firearms – and its judicial system reinterpret the Second Amendment as it was originally intended? We cannot be defined by guns.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am afraid that American democracy is more at risk than it has ever been since the Civil War.