It’s been less than two months since the assassination attempt on former President Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. Investigators say the shooter was likely less motivated by political ideology than he was by a desire to commit a mass shooting. Researchers who study political violence still are concerned that the U.S. will experience more dangerous incidents this election cycle and beyond. In July, a group of legal scholars, national security experts, and law enforcement called on elected officials to create election safety task forces on a state and national level to respond to and monitor threats pertaining to the election. Garen Wintemute, a physician and founder of University of California Davis’s Violence Prevention Research Program, has been studying gun violence since the 1980s. Last year, it published the results of a large survey digging into Americans’ beliefs on the issue. “Small but concerning proportions of the population consider violence, including lethal violence, to be usually or always justified to advance political objectives,” Wintemute and his colleagues said. Just under eight percent said that if they found themselves in a situation where they believed political violence was justified, they planned to be armed with a gun. The center is preparing to release a new survey this fall, with its latest insights on the appetite for political violence in the U.S., Vox reports.
Wintemute says, "We’re continuing to see a sustained level of support for the idea of political violence, and of willingness to be a combatant if civil war comes about. There is a clear connection with some subsets of firearm ownership, but also with racism and sexism and homophobia — pretty much any brand of fear and loathing you might want to mention." He says that "he set of circumstances most likely to produce political violence in this country in the next few months are a closely contested election, with momentum swinging to Democrats, and with high-profile instances of political violence having already occurred. Those are the circumstances we are in today." Wintemute says another assassination attempt "will happen again. Whether it will involve an elected official as a target, I can’t say. But we’ve opened the door to political violence this election season, and there are still some leaders using rhetoric that enables violence. And we will all pay a price for that, I suspect." Still, "Large-scale violence is really unlikely ... sporadic outbreaks, particularly if the battleground states remain really close — is it possible? Sure. Might there be attempts to intimidate election officials? Absolutely."
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