According to Brady United, the nation’s oldest gun violence prevention group, 327 people are shot with guns every day in the United States. Over one million have been shot in the last decade. There are more civilian-owned firearms than there are people in this country. Gun violence is so ubiquitous that we only raise our heads once in a great while when the body count is shockingly high or the victims are particularly vulnerable, like elementary school children. But this weekend we all looked up sharply when a lone sniper shot at Donald Trump, grazing his ear, killing a spectator and wounding two others.
These shootings are all horrific but this one was particularly shocking because America's history of political assassinations is very long. We are living in one of our acute periods of political violence, whether from religious terrorism or unbalanced people who are radicalized on the internet. There have been attempted assassinations, assaults and violent threats against members of Congress, the judiciary, the media and election officials in recent years and now the current Republican nominee for president, who also happens to be a former president. We are awash in political violence and the proliferation of guns has made it particularly deadly.
