Another awful American day at the tip of a smoking gun

The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Saturday sent a shock through the nation. But WFAE’s Tommy Tomlinson, in his "On My Mind" commentary, says we probably should not have been so stunned.

It breaks my heart to say this. But what happened Saturday in that field in Pennsylvania was just the latest example of the American way.

Somebody was angry or upset or deluded and decided to pick up a gun. If he had aimed three inches to the right, Donald Trump would be dead.

This is how we live now. Our country smells like gunpowder, and feels like blue steel, and sounds like a pop-pop-pop off in the distance that you hope is just fireworks.

You may have learned more about the shooter by the time you hear this than I do as I am writing it. But don’t assume he hated Trump. John Hinckley shot President Reagan in 1981 in a twisted attempt to impress actress Jodie Foster. There are so many people in darkened bedrooms who boil with anger or frustration, who indulge in wild conspiracy theories, who suffer from mental illness. This is true everywhere. But only here do we make it so easy for them to acquire the tools of killing.

You’ve already heard people claiming it was a failure of security that the shooter was apparently able to set up on a rooftop about 400 feet away, where his shots grazed Trump’s right ear, killed one audience member and critically wounded two others. In this specific case, that may be true. But in the larger picture, there is no way to fully protect even a presidential candidate from a weapon that can kill from a distance of more than a football field.

Donald Trump is lucky. Luckier than the 27 at Sandy Hook, and the 32 at Virginia Tech, and the 49 at the Pulse in Orlando, and the 60 at the country music festival in Las Vegas. Luckier than any number of teenagers and children and other innocent victims who die of gunshots in this country every single day. Luckier than the man at that Pennsylvania rally who was killed as he shielded his wife and two daughters.

My thoughts and prayers are with the former president and everyone else harmed in the shooting. But as with every other shooting, thoughts and prayers do not suffice.

We should try, just this once, to be honest.

If the Secret Service can’t protect a presidential candidate from a shooter, we can’t expect a schoolteacher to do it.

If we infuse our politics with the rhetoric of war, we shouldn’t be surprised when some people start believing they’re soldiers.

If we say “some people need killing,” as our Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson did recently, we should expect somebody to take him seriously and literally.

And if we continue to make it so maddeningly easy to acquire deadly weapons, we should know that some people who acquire them will use those weapons for death.

There’s a theory in storytelling commonly known as Chekhov’s gun. It’s from the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, who said that if you place a loaded rifle on the stage, by the end of the play, somebody is going to fire it.

On the American stage — in every classroom, every nightclub, every hospital, every grocery store, every park, every church service, every presidential rally — the specter of a loaded gun hangs everywhere. And over and over and over again, somebody fires it.