A bullet nearly killed former US President Trump during a rally in Pennsylvania on 13 JUL 2024. This is what we’ve learned as I write this on 14 JUL 2024.
I don't condone violence!
For a few weeks I’ve not been writing articles for Half Life Crisis as we are updating our website. But in light of the events, this important turning point in American History needs to be properly captured because misinformation is already rampant. I realize it is my duty to document it before the news cycle and the click-bait opportunists distort the truth.
This is what happened. Trump was holding a rally in the town of Butler in Pennsylvania. Around 6pm, just a few minutes into his speech as Trump was speaking about immigration, the shooter, who was later identified as Thomas Mathew Crooks, opened fire. The gunman used an AR-15 and shoot from a shed’s rooftop that was originally reported to be ~300-400 yards from Trump as he fired in rapid succession about eight shots. Later it was reported the gunman was at a range of ~400 feet – much closer. One of those rounds struck Trump on his right ear. The Secret Service fatally shot the gunman.
Trump was escorted to a nearby hospital. As a result of this incident two people were injured in the bleachers placed behind Trump, and one attendee was killed. It was reported he was a father protecting his children. Trump is lucky to be alive, this was definitely a failure by the Secret Service. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, the conspiracy theories hit the airwaves and social media like wild fire. This incident is further polarizing our country.
Somebody said it best, if the Secret Service could not stop Trump from being a victim of gun violence, while having snipers on rooftops protecting him, then what makes legislators think that a school teacher will be able to suppress an indiscriminate mass shooter? This reference being because there is (rightfully so) a lot of attention on Trump’s attempted assassination – but let’s not forget that mass shootings occur extremely often in the USA and gun violence is a daily occurrence.
My question then becomes: Is it too early to talk about gun violence in America again? I’ll be honest, this is extremely disturbing, and I’ve been warning about indicators of this exponential rise of violence in the country. Yesterday’s shooting was not a matter of if but when. And the propagandistic fallout is massive, which includes a lot of political figures, pundits, and Trump acolytes to pose him as a martyr, and use this as a catalyst to attack the political opposition.
More startingly, it has created an uptick of die-hard-Trump supporters to post all over “X” and other platforms that they “have been patient for too long” – and are not advocating for attacking the left and Democrats with violence. By the way, this is despite the fact that the man who shot Trump was a registered white male Republican. There is no shortage of posts claiming that this was an orchestrated attack by Biden. Which is also wrong yet extremely incendiary.
Shortsightedness and spin
One prominent bone I have to pick is with the Biden-Harris campaign. While everybody and their mothers, to include other Democratic leaders were posting their statements condemning violence, the campaign failed to put a statement. Good on the White House to be timelier, but it did take too long for them to be on record. This is important, because wasting time puts an electronic time-stamp that others use as propagandistic fodder to discredit the administration. And yes, that is happening.
Trump, after he was on his feet while surrounded by the Secret Service after the shooter was killed, of course took the opportunity to raise his fist as an act of defiance. True that he just survived an attempted assassination, but let’s not forget that plenty of Americans are experiencing the same or worse level of violence. The difference is that they don’t have a highly trained security detail to save them. Also, Trump has been saying quote “get over it” to families who have lost their loved ones on mass shootings. I’m glad he is was not killed, I don’t condone violence, but I also hope he will have a lot more empathy for others from now on.
I mentioned that the weapon was an AR-15, and this is important – because that is the sweetheart weapon of choice for the right-wing 2nd Amendment advocates. Trump was at approximately 400 feet from the rifle’s muzzle. That is about 133 yards, which is well within the maximum effective range of for that weapon, which is 600 yards. That is the furthest a round is accurate for this firearm. Yes, there are some other factors that affect accuracy, and the bullet will travel a lot further than that maximum effective range. For comparison for a 9mm handgun the maximum effective range is just a little over 50 yards, or less than twice the AR-15 range for accuracy.
Think about it for a moment. There is no shortage of people who are advocates of Trump that have been arrested for issuing death threats, or action on those threats to other Americans. In fact, there is no shortage of very rejoicing memes, posts, podcasts, and any other publications that have been gleeful when Trump’s opponents are brutalized in any manner. To be fair, a lot of the left leadership have been supportive of Trump in the sense they condemn the violence and wish him to recover.
Even Michael Cohen who is one of Trumps most ardent nemeses condemned the violence against Trump. And my concern is that even as I type this and look at my timelines on X, and on Facebook, a lot of the right-wing leaders are advocating for further polarization, and likely trying to pin that on Biden. Which of course should seem ridiculous on its face, but as I said before I have a bone to pick with the Biden Campaign because they seem to have lost control of the narrative.
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The left losing control
I should probably write an entire article about the aftermath of the presidential debate hosted by CNN a few weeks back. Biden severely underperformed, and Trump gish galloped with so many falsehoods and misrepresentation than I stopped counting past 100. The CNN moderators did not challenge Trump, framed the questions in a very bizarre manner, and in reality, this was not so much a debate, but really more a joint press conference. The most back and forth they got was about golf! Yes, it was bad.
Biden owned the fact that he underperformed, but of course Biden gets graded in a curve and his own party has no shortage of officials advocating for him to step down. I’ll write in a different article about why that is a terrible idea. But for this article the point is that the campaign has been scrambling a lot, and they are not aligning the actual White House message with the campaign. It is almost as though they want him to lose. I just hope they are simply incompetent. And I am not afraid to tell them that directly, except that the Biden campaign has published no phone numbers to talk to them, and they never answer any emails.
This situation will likely empower Trump and his supporters to see him as a quasi-deity. In fact, there is no shortage of memes and propaganda already depicting him as such, or even being cuddled by some godly figure during the shooting. And of course, him raising his fist on the air with his ear half-blown off is already MAGA merchandise you can buy right now. I’m not kidding.
There are more articles coming over. I checked on the Biden Campaign, and they are very much lost on the sauce. This will not help them, it will help Trump – and at the end of the day, I just hope that we can talk about preventing gun violence in America and bring us closer together. Sadly, my assessment is that this will further divide us, and my next article might be even more grim. I surely hope this one time I will be wrong, and instead of my predicted polarization, we come together as a nation. HLC