I keep hearing voices in the media wondering about the motive of the attempted assassin. I am not sure what his particular ideas were, but it seems to fit pattern of public violence. Shooters are often angry young men. There have been several who went through high school, outside of the group, seeming inconsequential to friends and neighbors. They have been people who that didn’t fit in well to others and were not fully formed in their own right. A demographic looking for purpose and acknowledgement in life.
This pattern has been something the world has known about for years and why armies are usually comprised of men between the ages of late teens to early 20s. They are physically strong and mentally available. The US Army used to recruit with the phrase Army of One, and this fellow was exactly that thing. Instead of being trained by the military, he practiced at the shooting range on his own and had expensive weapons available to him to play out what he believed.
We know that young men are often drawn to high risk activities. Youtube is filled with them high diving, bike racing and doing heart-stopping parkour. This is why society doesn’t allow them to drink before 21 and or rent cars before the age of 25. While this 20-year-old had the physical training to handle a gun, he did not have the formal moral or ethical training of when and where to shoot it.
Combined with current inflammatory partisan rhetoric, a young guy taking a shot at a candidate is not a surprising. Even after the shooting in Pennsylvania, people were joking about the violence. As much as I disagree with the former president’s discourse, I never want gun violence to be brought into the mix. Ironically, many of his supporters have fought to keep AR15s in the hands of the populous, only to have one nearly take out their leader.
Assassinations lead to wars and civil war is the worst; we do not want to go down that road. The idea that we can defend our democracy by shooting people in public we disagree with is not a good one. We don’t want the violent to choose our leaders.
What were this young man’s particular beliefs? Maybe he was disenchanted by the Republican choice and wanted someone else. Maybe he preferred the other nominee. Perhaps he wanted to feel important. While it matters to some degree, it should not take precedence over everyone else’s rights and freedoms. Each person should have one vote, and no single person, or small, political faction should be able to take away that right for everybody else.
