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Democrats leveraged the failed assassination of former President Donald Trump to voice their support for additional firearm regulations.
Trump was nearly killed at a rally in Pennsylvania as a bullet meant for his head instead nicked his ear, prompting Secret Service agents to tackle him to the ground and remove him from the event. Two rally attendees, David Dutch and James Copenhaver, were injured during the violence, while attendee Corey Comperatore was killed while defending his family.
Hosts of talk show The View condemned the violence but blamed the incident on firearm laws, as well as repeatedly invoked the fact that the shooter was a white male.
“I know everybody always says it’s too soon to talk about guns, and we should, because there has been a terrible death of a father of two, that thoughts and prayers should be where we go. I say no,” Sunny Hostin said. “I say now is the time to talk about the common denominator when it came to this assassination attempt, is America’s fascination and obsession with owning guns.”
Hostin mourned that “gun ownership will probably, because of this event, go up in this country instead of going down” and reiterated that “we need to have an honest and real conversation about real gun control legislation.” Joy Behar noted that the shooter acquired fifty rounds of ammunition hours before the rally and said the purchase should have “been reported.”
Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts, who also cofounded Everytown for Gun Safety, drew attention to firearm laws in Pennsylvania, where she contended there are “no background checks required to buy and carry a loaded semiautomatic rifle in public.” She added that the shooter was not “old enough to rent a car” but was “old enough to buy a semiautomatic rifle.”
David Hogg, a prominent youth gun control activist and survivor of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, referenced several massacres where police likewise failed to prevent casualties and claimed on social media that Americans therefore should “stop talking about the good guys with guns and start doing something about the guns.”
While progressives assert that increased gun control would assist with decreasing violence, conservatives observe that the underlying issues should instead be addressed and emphasize the need for citizens to have the ability to lawfully defend themselves.
