The attempted assassination of Donald Trump comes amid an all-too-familiar background.
We all know the statistics are shocking, as they are for such an advanced and wealthy nation: just under 40,000 are killed from guns each year, 11,000 of them homicides.
There are also just under 500,000-gun related crimes in the US each year.
Sobering figures.
Then there are the mass killings, and the particularly tragic incidents of school shootings and the frightening collateral damage they have on communities across the nation.
It is wrong to assume that the assassination attempt on Trump on Saturday at a rally in upstate Pennsylvania is a watershed moment in American politics, and society more generally.
While an address from Joe Biden (just his third address to the nation in his presidency) may have brought gravitas to a temporarily chaotic situation, or Trump announcing that we must unite in the face of violence, the fact remains that this is nothing new.
While Trump's raised fist and bloodied face in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, and his mouthed words "fight, fight, fight", might seem as an enduring and indelible set of images, the effects may only be temporary.
Pundits are beginning to argue that the impact on the race for president may only be slight.
In such a polarised electorate, most people have made up their minds already.
It may marginally give the Trump campaign a bump, especially in desperate races in the handful of swing states that will decide this election.
It may also cement Biden as the Democratic candidate, given that the talk of stepping down in favour of another has been quieted by the weekend's events.
But, in the long history of US gun violence, and particularly political violence, this was just another violent act in a violent society.
Neither was this a particularly escalatory attack.
There have been several attempts in recent memory on politicians, including the shocking shooting of Arizona representative Gabby Giffords in 2011, the shooting of Louisiana congressman Steve Scalise in 2017, and the kidnapping attempt of Gretchen Whitmer in 2020.
More recently, there was the attempted kidnapping and assault of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul, in 2022.
The United States, therefore, is no stranger to violence, especially political violence.
There have been hundreds of attempts on officials over the years, with 58 of them being actual killings.
These attacks have been for all sorts of reasons, levelled at all sorts of politicians from across the spectrum.
Far from the shooting being a game-changer, this attempt on a former president and current candidate's life is just the latest in a string of politically motivated assassination attempts in the nation's history, reaching right back to the assassination of David Ramsay in 1815.
Four US presidents have been murdered over the years.
Lincoln in 1865, and Kennedy in 1963, are perhaps the most famous, but James A Garfield and William McKinley also died from assassins' bullets.
There has also been a score of near misses on the presidency, including Ronald Reagan in 1981 (a shooting largely given as the reason for an outpouring of sympathy and his subsequent second-term win).
And there was a close shave for Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. He was saved by his speech notes in his breast pocket that slowed the bullet.
While Roosevelt later delivered the speech with the bullet still in him, his act of bravado, unlike Reagan, did not translate into an election win.
Trump may find that the political capital he can wring from this tragedy does not improve his position in a similar way.
We are, by now, well used to the banality of American violence.
That is the tragedy.
