“Voting from the Rooftops” Will Kill America
There is no question our democracy is in danger
By: Devin Hughes
“When all else fails, vote from the rooftops” has been a popular slogan among a particularly extreme segment of pro-gun advocates for decades, one that in recent years has even been promoted by gun companies.
At former President Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania rally on Saturday, we witnessed the horrifying reality of “voting from the rooftops.”
While we wait for more answers about the shooting and the shooter’s motives, there is something we can state with absolute certainty. The clear and present danger to our democracy posed by the unchecked proliferation of firearms and an insurrectionist ideology transcends traditional political boundaries.
Our current patchwork of weak gun laws provides a would-be assassin with all the tools they could desire at their disposal. Indeed, even in the wake of Saturday’s horror and the heightened security risk, the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee cannot prohibit firearms from the entirety of the event due to state law.
While the shooter was taken out by the Secret Service mere seconds after opening fire, that brief window of time was still enough for a mass shooting to occur due to the firepower of the AR-15 platform, the lethality of which has been proven in mass shooting after mass shooting.
“Voting from the rooftops” and the insurrectionist ideology that slogan trumpets is lethal to democratic norms. Freedom of expression, particularly political expression, is essential for a healthy democracy. Regardless of how passionately one disagrees or agrees with former President Trump, his politics, and the ideas he espouses, he had every right to hold a peaceful rally on Saturday. And his supporters who gathered there had every right to do so free from the threat of violence.
That sacred freedom was violated Saturday, and if others take up the mantle of “voting from the rooftops,” no matter the original shooter’s motive, we risk losing that freedom forever.
At the time of publication, there are still more questions than answers about Saturday’s shooting. We know a bullet hit former President Donald Trump’s ear, an attendee died while shielding his loved ones, and two others were injured, thus marking the assassination attempt as a mass shooting. We know the shooter was killed moments after by Secret Service snipers. We know the shooter was a registered Republican who had donated $15 to a Democratic political action fund. We know the shooter climbed to the roof of a building more than 100 yards away from the president, used his father’s legally purchased AR-15, and that he was wearing a shirt from a popular right-wing pro-gun YouTube channel (which swiftly denounced the violence).
Yet the shooter’s motive remains elusive, and we may never know what words or ideology, if any, spurred him to action. While his former high school classmates have come forward and described him as quiet and likely conservative in his political beliefs, that provides no answers to why he would target Trump, the Republican nominee. We still don’t know how the shooter managed to get a clear line of fire on the former President despite the substantial security present.
These questions are extremely important to answer, not just for the sake of future security, but to also halt the contagion of conspiracy theories already swirling around the tragedy.
This search for answers though will not alter the new reality we face.
America stands at the edge of an abyss, with worryingly large numbers of people beginning to heed the siren call of violence against their political opponents even before the shooting. In the tinderbox of current American politics, widespread access to lethal weaponry serves as kerosene. And a match was just lit.
With fear for our democracy, I fervently hope Saturday’s violence serves as a clarion call for all to denounce violence and any ideology that would insert the threat of gun violence into political discourse.
Devin Hughes is the President and Founder of GVPedia, a non-profit that provides access to gun violence prevention research and data.
Photo via Twitter.