The American Right’s Self-Inflicted Gun Violence Crisis

A salesperson takes an AR- rifle off the wall at a store in Orem Utah on March Photo George Frey Bloomberg via Getty Images Conservative America was shaken this week when Charlie Kirk a prominent ally of President Donald Trump was shot and killed during a campus event at Utah Valley University The circumstance recalls a disturbing pattern Even the champions of pro-gun politics are not immune to America s epidemic of gun violence Just last year Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally Four decades ago Ronald Reagan was shot and nearly killed by a would-be assassin More just now in a far-left gunman opened fire on Republican members of Congress at a baseball practice critically wounding House Majority Whip Steve Scalise From Gerald Ford who survived two separate assassination attempts in one month in to local GOP staffers dying in common gun crime the list of right-wing political figures hit by gun violence is a long one These bloody episodes underscore a grim irony The very politicians and pundits who promulgate expansive gun rights and tough-on-crime rhetoric have repeatedly discovered themselves on the receiving end of bullets These attacks have grabbed headlines but there are other conservative casualties of gun violence whose stories often go unmentioned numerous of them They are the rank-and-file of the GOP the voters who put the elected leaders in office and follow the likes of Kirk on social media It is the residents of conservative America the so-called red states who are suffering the heaviest toll in daily gun deaths Gun Violence Gap Despite rhetoric painting liberal big cities as lawless war zones the the bulk dangerous places in America in terms of gun violence are often deep-red states and rural towns Federal healthcare material reveal that states with conservative leadership consistently have higher firearm death rates than their blue-state counterparts In eight of the states with the highest gun death rates per capita were won by Trump in the voting process Mississippi with a staggering per firearm death rate the worst in the nation voted solidly Republican By contrast states with the lowest gun death rates like Massachusetts at per reliably vote Democratic This pattern holds nationwide Society physical condition research confirms that states in the South and Mountain West with weaker gun laws and higher gun ownership have the highest gun death rates whereas Northeast states with strong gun safety laws see far fewer deaths In other words the gun-friendly policies of red America correlate with more funerals and grieving families year after year Crucially this gap isn t just about suicides in isolated areas it extends to violent crime and murders as well A latest analysis of homicide details located that the murder rate in Republican-voting states such as Mississippi Louisiana and Alabama was percent higher than in Democratic-voting states in both and Even when researchers control for big urban centers the red-state murder challenge persists Remove the largest city from every red state and their homicide rate still far exceeds that of blue states The notion that Democrat-run cities alone drive violence collapses under scrutiny People are statistically safer in New York City or San Francisco than in several rural or Southern Republican-led states People are statistically safer in New York City or San Francisco than in a large number of rural or Southern Republican-led states A groundbreaking inquiry also located that firearm fatalities are now more likely in small rural towns than in big cities a reversal of historical trends Thanks largely to soaring gun suicides the majority rural counties experienced overall firearm death rates percent higher than the greater part urban counties in up-to-date decades That means the archetypal American heartland often solid Republican territory quietly endures a higher per-capita burden of gun death than metropolises like Los Angeles or New York The carnage encompasses tragic self-inflicted shootings domestic violence with firearms and yes the mass shootings that now regularly strike church gatherings small-town Walmarts and school classrooms in conservative communities No corner of the country is spared but red America is bleeding preponderance Paradox of Pro-Gun Politics Why do those who govern the the greater part gun-afflicted states seem least inclined to acknowledge the dilemma Republican leaders have long styled themselves as the party of law and order yet they preside over what one analyst dubbed a red state murder complication They champion the Second Amendment as a sacred pillar of freedom but fail to target root causes that contribute to homicide and suicide rates that dwarf those in other advanced nations The Trump administration s response to violence has instead been to deploy federal agents into conducting roving patrols in democratic strongholds such as Washington to help enforce a few of the country s most of restrictive gun laws Meanwhile Trump and the GOP are hobbling the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives by leaving it without a leader legalizing fully automatic simulation devices and cutting key research into understanding and preventing violence It s a cruel paradox The right wing s permissive gun policies have boomeranged to haunt their own constituents and politicians Related Nothing Will Stop Trump From Weaponizing Charlie Kirk s Killing to Attack the Left When even a figure like Kirk who once declared that more armed citizens make us safer ends up bleeding from a bullet wound it highlights how indiscriminate and all-encompassing America s gun scourge has become The casualties are subsequently left with no solace This year the Trump administration shut down the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention and slashed million in gun violence prevention grants Rather than face the uncomfortable reality that easy access to firearms poor gun trafficking controls and under-resourced research is fueling more death in red states GOP officers often deflect to problems in blue cities or pin violence on mental physical condition alone The numbers though don t lie Those pro-life conservative lawmakers have effectively enacted policies that make their communities less safe with more grieving parents more emptied school desks and more devastated towns as the predictable outcome Bullets Know No Politics It s increasingly apparent that the right wing s embrace of guns has exacted a disproportionate price on its own side From the would-be assassins targeting GOP presidents to the quiet epidemic of firearm suicide among rural white men a demographic that leans conservative American gun society is in a dark twist victimizing the very communities that preponderance fiercely defend it Related Intercepted Podcast Guns Before Country If this country is going to surmount its gun violence crises it must confront an uncomfortable truth The people of red America are not being protected by the gun-centric promises of the far right they are being buried by them How a large number of more Republican politicians must be rushed to the ER with gunshot wounds How several small-town obituaries must quietly note a firearm tragedy before ideology yields to reality The right s reflexive answers to any shooting more patrols militarized police more guns and less firearm regulation are looking less like freedom and more like a death pact Until conservatives reckon with this it the cycle will continue The communities they lead will continue to suffer the highest rates of murder and suicide and even their majority of venerated leaders will remain in the line of fire In the end America s gun violence problem is not a red or blue issue Right now however red America is paying the steepest price The hope is that acknowledging this truth could spur the kind of cross-partisan soul-searching and modification that has so far proved elusive Until then the grim paradox persists The loudest champions of an absolutist gun custom are among its foremost casualties The post The American Right s Self-Inflicted Gun Violence Predicament appeared first on The Intercept