The day after Donald Trump’s assassination attempt, Nigel Farage hastily concluded that his political opponents were to be blamed because “the narrative that is put out there about Trump by the liberals that oppose him is so nasty… that I think it almost encourages this type of behaviour.”
How could Farage know at that early stage what had influenced the behaviour of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old who had opened fire on the former US president with an AR-15 assault rifle?
Even now, more than a week later, the investigation is still ongoing. However, from what is known Crooks was not a man with strong political convictions or a “liberal”. According to one of his classmates, he “definitely was conservative” and he certainly was a registered Republican, though he had also made a small donation to a Democratic group.
There is no report of Crooks expressing strong-held political views in social media and early reports have suggested that he acted alone and his gesture probably did not have a political motivation.
Guns
What might be more relevant is the fact that Crooks was a gun enthusiast, but so bad at shooting that he had been rejected by his school rifle team. He also seems to have been a loner who was frequently bullied at school.
In 2012 another troubled 20-year-old committed a mass shooting at an American school (Sandy Hook Elementary School) using his mother’s assault rifle. After this massacre of 26 people, of which 20 were children, many Americans, including Crooks’ father, bought assault rifles fearing that there could be a ban on the sale of such weapons.
Eleven years later Crooks, another troubled 20-year-old, used his father’s assault rifle in an attempt to kill Donald Trump.
According to the Washington Post (21 July) Crooks may have been driven by a desire for attention and chose his target out of convenience, as the Trump’s rally was taking place near his home.
Sadly, there have been frequent assassinations and attempted assassination of US presidents and presidential candidates. As a commentator put it, this type of violence is normal in the US and “it is as American as apple pie” (The Independent, 16 July).
Just a few weeks before this latest assassination attempt, the US Surgeon General (the equivalent of our Chief Medical Officer) had declared that “Firearm violence is a public health crisis. Our failure to address it is a moral crisis”.
Among US children and adolescents gunshot wounds have become the leading cause of death, and the number of these deaths is 72 times higher in the US than in the UK.
When all ages are considered, there were 48,204 gun deaths in the US in 2022, almost equally divided between suicides and homicides. It is unlikely that the same number of suicides would take place without easy access to guns, as the suicide rate in the US is significantly higher than in other countries.
American films can help to get a better understanding of this country. In 1976 Scorsese directed Taxi Driver: it is the story of Travis, a veteran consumed by anger, but unsure about where to direct his anger.
Travis initially plans to assassinate a presidential candidate at a rally, but he is chased away by Secret Service agents. He then decides to target a gang that controls a 12-year-old child prostitute.
Travis ends up shooting three man from this gang but is also severely injured: the press reports his actions as those of a heroic vigilante.
All countries have angry young people, who do not know precisely what they are angry about. They can be described as “rebels without a cause”, as in the eponymous American film of 1955. What facilitates murders in the US is the easy access to guns.
In the US Trump supporters think that the former President was saved by God, whereas Nigel Farage has suggested that Trump might have been saved by his Guardian Angel.
If we want to resolve the plague of gunshot killings in the US, what we need is not divine interventions but human legislation. Trump republicans, the US allies of Farage, have been the main obstacle to sensible gun control legislation.
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