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The shooter who attempted to kill former president Donald Trump at a rally in western Pennsylvania on Saturday was found with an AR-15-style rifle near his body.
Anyone familiar with the recent history of American gun violence should not be surprised. The AR-15 — an exceptionally deadly weapon capable of firing several rounds at high rates of speed — and AR-15 style weapons have been used in recent years to kill scores of people and injure hundreds more in mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas; Buffalo, New York; Dayton, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Parkland, Florida, and Orlando, Florida.
Republicans could take action to make it harder for people to obtain these weapons, if they wanted to. There’s even a precedent for it: In 1994, Democratic President Bill Clinton, with the help of Congressional Democrats and a small but essential block of Republican lawmakers, enacted the Federal Assault Weapons ban, barring certain kinds of semi-automatic weapons (including the Colt AR-15) along with high-capacity magazines. To get the regulation to pass, lawmakers agreed that it would expire in 10 years unless renewed by Congress.
Politics around gun ownership became more polarized, and the provision expired without renewal after 2004. Today, introducing another federal ban has become a top priority for several Democrats, following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown Connecticut in 2012. Organizations working to reduce gun violence agree with them; polling suggests that a majority of Americans would approve of a ban, too. According to one Fox News poll last year, 61 percent of Americans would support legislation restricting the weapons commonly referred to as assault rifles.
Opponents of assault weapons bans point out that the vast majority of American gun homicides are committed by handguns, not so-called assault rifles — which is true. But policymakers and safety advocates focus on the AR-style weapons precisely because of how much damage they’re able to do to multiple people, and how quickly they can do it, along with the fact that they’ve been used in several recent mass shootings.
But even after an assassination attempt on the former president this weekend, it’s highly unlikely that modern-day Republicans will do anything to try to prevent people from obtaining these guns.
Indeed, hardly anyone expects them to bring up guns in the coming days. To the extent that Republicans are assigning blame, it’s mostly to Democrats. Despite the fact that officials still haven’t released any information on the shooter’s possible motive, GOP Sen. J.D. Vance (Ohio), now Trump’s running mate, wrote on X that Democratic rhetoric “led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said that Democrats’ “inflammatory rhetoric put lives at risk.” Utah Sen. Mike Lee called for “government control, not gun control,” arguing that too much centralized power inevitably led to political violence (or something).
But it wasn’t always this way.
Republicans have been essential to passing gun safety legislation in the past
It might be difficult to imagine now, but the last time a gunman got this close to assassinating a president, it resulted in some of the most significant gun safety legislation in American history. A small but powerful contingent of Republicans was crucial to advocating, and ultimately voting, for the law.
It was March 30, 1981, when John Hinckley Jr. shot President Ronald Reagan outside of a Washington DC hotel, injuring Reagan and three others. Reagan suffered a punctured lung, but survived after undergoing emergency surgery.
His press secretary, James Brady, was more gravely injured. After being shot in the head, Brady survived but was partially paralyzed for the rest of his life. When Brady died, in 2014, his death was ruled a homicide resulting from the gunshot injury.
After the shooting, Brady and his wife, Sarah, both high-profile Republicans, got involved in a nascent campaign to prevent gun violence. They connected with the National Council to Control Handguns, which Sarah eventually took over in 1989, and began meeting with lawmakers in order to build support for legislation that would require prospective gun buyers to undergo background checks.
Hinckley, the man who shot Reagan and Brady, had been arrested months before the assassination attempt for bringing guns to an airport, and had a history of mental illness. Setting up a background check system that screened people who weren’t supposed to have firearms — including people convicted of felonies — could help prevent others from suffering from gun violence.
The first iteration of what became the Brady bill was introduced in 1987. Even in a less polarized time, the bill faced National Rifle Association and Congressional opposition, stalled out, and died in committee. In 1993, after a nudge from President Clinton to Congress, then-Rep. Chuck Schumer re-introduced the bill and began working for its passage in Congress. By the end of the year, the Bradys were at the White House watching Clinton sign the law.
The Brady bill expanded those who were barred from owning guns to include people convicted of domestic violence and those dishonorably discharged from the military. It required all federally licensed gun dealers to run a check before selling a gun to someone. And it established the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which helped those dealers perform the background checks, and which now provides policymakers and law enforcement with a rough idea of how many people are currently buying guns. A year later, when members of Congress moved to pass the assault weapons ban, the Bradys were major supporters, helping the ban to pass, over the opposition of some pro-gun Democrats.
The Bradys were Republicans, and gun owners. They were motivated not by partisanship but by their experience as gun violence survivors who wanted to prevent others from going through what they did. While the law establishing background checks ultimately didn’t go as far as many would have liked, it established an important mechanism for firearms sales, one that today is exceedingly popular among the public.
In recent years, polling shows that expanding background checks is supported by upwards of 90 percent of the public. And while the current laws contain loopholes that allow far too many people to get around the restrictions, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 4.4 million background checks since Brady’s passage have resulted in a denial of sale. In other words, they blocked sales to people who weren’t legally allowed to own a gun.
It’s not a coincidence that the US has this many guns
Even with those curbs, the United States has the highest rate of civilian firearm ownership on Earth, with at least 120 guns per 100 people, and hardly any restrictions on their sale or access. The saturation of guns in the United States was created through decades worth of advocacy and lobbying efforts by pro-gun organizations like the National Rifle Association, and it was built by Republican allies in Congress and in the White House, who have staunchly and consistently stood in the way of any legislation that would restrict people from acquiring guns, in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2019, and too many other times to mention.
The presence of so many guns has led to a sense of cynicism that gun laws could even be effective, but we didn’t end up as the only nation with more guns than people by accident.
A country with this many guns, and this level of deep polarization, is a nation vulnerable to political violence, just as we experienced this past weekend. As the shootings of Trump, former Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and Republican Rep. Steve Scalise make clear, leaders from both parties are at risk of becoming victims because of it.
The dark irony is that you are likely to hear only one party speak directly about the weapons that make leaders so vulnerable to assassination attempts. Time and time again, Republicans have gone out of their way to avoid criticizing the instruments that make this political climate so potentially dangerous.
The details of how the Brady bill and assault weapons ban came into existence matter. They undermine the notion that the politics around gun ownership have always been hopelessly deadlocked and always will be.
Our recent history shows us that breaking through the partisan stalemate is possible. But it requires that both parties fully grasp the ways in which we are all vulnerable to gun violence — even the former president of the United States.
