Trump needs to wake up to gun violence

America’s gun violence epidemic isn’t going away. Since the start of this year, about 12,000 people have died [COPY: update figure and link to this when ready to publish] from gun violence in a total of 400  mass shootings in the United States. Although far from their all-time peak in 2021, the number of mass shootings per year has more than doubled since 2014. Given its severity, it is unsurprising that half of Americans see gun violence as a “very big problem” in the U.S. Beyond this, feelings on various policy proposals to help tackle the issue remain controversial, even as dozens of Americans die daily from firearms across the country. When considering other wealthy nations, the United States is a shockingly massive outlier in gun violence deaths per capita. Deepening the crisis, the U.S. is also an outlier in the near-total lack of expeditious gun legislation following catastrophic mass shootings. 

The crisis has become so severe it has started to personally affect those able to create gun control policy, making their hesitance to change even more confounding. This past July, former President Donald Trump narrowly escaped with his life after an assassination attempt at a campaign rally. Recently, on Sept. 15, Trump survived another failed attempt while golfing at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida. Despite these harrowing encounters with gun violence, Trump’s stance on the firearms that nearly claimed his life hasn’t changed. These views on gun reform are ignorant at best, and archaic at worst. As the “most pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment president,” Trump has no plans to enact new gun legislation if reelected. Rather than attribute the volume of shootings to the quantity and ease of access to firearms in the United States, Trump is quick to shift the blame to mental illness or guns getting in the wrong hands. 

It is time for Trump to wake up to the reality of the gun violence epidemic in the U.S. There is no easy solution to stopping gun violence, but remaining blissfully ignorant is unacceptable. This is unsustainable and dangerous, and cannot be the paradigm for another four years. 

Trump doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel on gun control, but advocating for some gun reform would make sense after nearly being killed twice. There’s nothing he can do to stop mass shootings overnight, but tamping down the issues that played a role in both assassination attempts could go a long way to improving gun legislation in America. The AR-15 style rifle purchased by Thomas Crooks’ father, later to be used by Crooks in his attempt on Trump’s life, has been used extensively to perpetrate mass shootings. While an outright ban of such rifles has been floated for decades, making them more difficult to acquire by increasing restrictions on who can legally purchase such a firearm would be a start. Neither Pennsylvania nor Florida require universal background checks for prospective buyers of long rifles. However, expanding background checks might not be an ideal solution. The 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act focused primarily on incentivizing background checks, and two years later, what should’ve been a monumental bill has hardly impacted the epidemic.

Another avenue of attack could be ramping up resources to reduce the number of guns illegally crossing state lines. The United States has extremely loose gun trafficking legislation. The Mar-a-Lago shooter, who was a convicted felon, used this loophole to his advantage, purchasing his SKS-style rifle from an unlicensed dealer, who isn’t required to perform a background check. His SKS was one of more than 68,000 illegally trafficked firearms used in hundreds of shootings over the past five years. Despite the apparent risks posed by a hoard of loosely regulated firearms, pro-gun lawmakers have refused to even approach the subject of gun policy on the floors of Congress. A changed Trump could be a difference-maker.

“The most pro gun, pro Second Amendment president” may need much more than two failed assassination attempts to motivate him to counteract the gun violence epidemic. It may be time to look elsewhere for inspiration on what reforms to prioritize — plenty of wealthy nations have enacted comprehensive reforms following historic instances of gun violence, resulting in dramatic decreases in gun violence thereafter. 

When mass shootings occur in other wealthy countries, those countries typically respond by banning whichever weapons were responsible for the meaningless slaughter of their citizens. In Great Britain, a once thriving gun culture rapidly degraded when faced with its worst mass shooting in its history in 1987. Its government rapidly passed bans to pump-action and semiautomatic weapons, as well as legislation requiring shotgun registration. A catastrophic school shooting in 1996 resulted in the banning of almost all handguns, with the next Labour government banning the rest in the following year. Since then, gun ownership rates, along with death rates by firearm, in the United Kingdom have been among the developed world’s lowest. 

Norway, Australia, New Zealand and Canada also had high rates of gun ownership and loose restrictions prior to imposing sweeping reforms after mass shootings on their soil. In Germany, restrictions have also gradually tightened over the last decades following mass shootings, with authorities required to check gun owners’ reason of ownership every five years. This law operates in tandem with other laws regarding criminal history, passing a state exam on safe firearm handling, and being at least 18 years of age. Remarkably, anyone who is less than 25 years old and applying for their first gun license must have their mental health evaluated by a psychologist to ensure they are capable of responsible gun ownership. 

Taking into account the national economies of the aforementioned countries, rates of gun ownership and looseness of restrictions are strongly correlated with the magnitude of mass shootings. For Trump, the writing should be on the wall: Without drastically reducing the number of guns in circulation and tightening restrictions on what kind of guns can be legally purchased, he cannot hope to stop these sorts of attempts before they start. 

Informing Trump’s reluctance to shift position is also the deeply cemented culture surrounding gun ownership in the United States. No country on earth has a more pseudo-religious relationship with its firearms nor one that is more deeply intertwined with values of freedom, self-defense and liberty. The nations mentioned above don’t have quite the same problem or the same rates of gun ownership per capita. Nevertheless, the wish to preserve America’s gun culture shouldn’t outweigh the clear need to reduce this nation’s rates of mass shootings. 

Despite the strength of gun culture in the United States, Trump cannot continue allowing himself to be governed by its outdated principles. The data, international precedent and public opinion all point toward a future that demands reform. No nation is more ravaged by gun violence and simultaneously so intent on doing nothing about it. As a near victim of this catastrophic cycle, it remains astonishing that Trump hasn’t made any strides to bettering the magnitude of gun violence in the United States. Trump, it is time to truly wake up to the necessity of firearms reform in this country. 

Maximilian Schenke is an Opinion Columnist who writes about whatever is on his mind, but typically focuses on politics. He loves receiving criticism or otherwise at maxsch@umich.edu.

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