EDITORIAL: And now, more violence

Sure, we were all shocked when a gunman’s bullet came within inches of ending former President Donald Trump’s life. But few of us were surprised.

The violent rhetoric has been a staple of GOP candidates — including and especially the guy who got shot — since the 2016 election and has only escalated since.

Do you really need examples? Fine.

In October 2018, Trump praised the current Minnesota Governor and former Rep. Greg Gianforte for bodyslamming a reporter. In 2020, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis cop, Trump tweeted, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) runs political ads that are paeans to gun culture. Just last week, North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson told a church full of GOP faithful that “some people need killing.” And then there was the time that Trump told a crowd of people to storm the Capitol.

There are so many more examples that it would be impossible to catalog them all in a newspaper. The GOP’s calls to violence in the last 10 years could fill a book.

Do Dems do it, too? Not really, no. And unlike about half of House Republicans, none of them wear AR-15 lapel pins — the very gun that shot off Trump’s ear.

So these chickens, they have come home to roost, but not in the way the GOP wanted. Probably. There is no doubt that taking a bullet was good for the Trump campaign, but we’re pretty sure if this was an inside job, as so many people want to believe, that they wouldn’t choose a 20-year-old loser with no military training and his old man’s rifle.

Pretty sure the Dems had nothing to do with it either, though it does bear the stamp of their own ineptitude.

No, this is where we are now. This is who we are. When President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama and others said this week that there was no place for violence in this country, they were wrong. This is the shootingest country in the world, and that’s the way the GOP, with support from the NRA, wants it. Except when it’s pointed at them.

Even a total moron could have predicted violence on the campaign trail or in the aftermath of the election. That it was a registered Republican who pulled the trigger this time is equally unsurprising — that, as far as I can tell, was what the GOP wanted. Except not like this.

But violence is like fire: difficult to control once you unleash it and let it get out of hand. Two people — the shooter and a bystander — are already dead, two more gravely injured. And right now things are very much out of hand.