Biden has had his day. Alas, political violence will be seen again

Brown made his famous declaration in 1967, when America was in a clasp of violence, four years after President John F. Kennedy had been killed in 1963.

Kennedy's brother, the presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, was killed in 1968. Another presidential candidate, George Wallace, was seriously wounded in 1972, leaving him partially paralysed for the remainder of his life.

Age-old tradition

Brown's dictum would not have felt out of place 100 years earlier, however. During the 1860s, tensions around slavery erupted into a bloody civil war between the Union and Confederacy, still the deadliest conflict in American history.

President Abraham Lincoln, the victor, was shot in the back of the head in April 1865 by a Confederate sympathiser while watching a play at a theatre, and assassins would manage to kill two more presidents over the next 36 years.

A disgruntled Republican supporter angry over not receiving a political appointment murdered James Garfield in 1881. Then, in 1901, with the French president and Italian king having recently been killed, an anarchist took out President William McKinley at the World's Fair in Buffalo, New York.

McKinley's death led to the Secret Service taking over security for all future presidents, but that did not stop would-be assassins from trying.

During an ultimately unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1912, former President Teddy Roosevelt was shot in the chest by someone with mental health issues. The slug remained in Roosevelt's chest the rest of his life.

Seeking revolution

Just over two weeks before his inauguration in February 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt narrowly missed injury when a disgruntled bricklayer fired five shots at him at a political rally. One of the bullets did kill Anton Cermak, the Mayor of Chicago.

Roosevelt's eventual successor, Harry S. Truman, faced his own assassins in November 1950, when two Puerto Rican nationalists, unhappy over America's colonial control of Puerto Rico, attacked the president's temporary residence. Both attackers were shot dead, as was a policeman.

Uniquely, President Gerald Ford faced two assassination attempts by women in California in September 1975. The first, in Sacramento, came from a follower of Charles Manson, a cult leader and white supremacist who was convinced that there would be a race war.

She failed to operate the pistol properly and missed the opportunity for a close-range shot. Shortly after, a second woman who wanted revolution fired two bullets at Ford in San Francisco, missing with both.

A deadly mix

What explains the long and deadly history of which the Trump shooting is but one more chapter? Three factors account for the high level of American political violence compared to other similar democracies.

First, there is a historic pattern of America embracing political violence whereby such an approach is normalised. Then there is the fuel for political violence through polarisation and divisions along race and class. Finally, the US has a lot of guns that are relatively easy to buy.

Right from its birth, the United States has revelled in political violence. Its revolutionary origins demonstrated both the desirability and potential efficacy of violence in the pursuit of political goals (even though these efforts have universally failed to achieve fundamental change).

Those deploying non-democratic means have often justified their acts through America's revolutionary start. One such example is Timothy McVeigh, the man who detonated a huge bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.

McVeigh wore a shirt with a quote from Thomas Jefferson, a founding father and author of the Declaration of Independence. It read: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

On 6 January 2021, some of those who stormed Congress to try to stop the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to Biden carried the Gadsden flag. This symbol of right-wing libertarianism first appeared in the American Revolution.

Mythical harmony

The storming of Congress perfectly illustrates the US habit of division, polarisation, and a simmering history of institutional racism, the police killing of George Floyd in 2020 being a recent example.

In short, Americans have had both the willingness and the means to kill one another for centuries. The notion of some golden era of harmony before the current turmoil is both ahistorical and naïve.

One element unites every single assassination attempt against a president or presidential candidate across 159 years is that they all involved guns—another unique aspect of American identity.

The 20-year-old man who wounded Trump could not legally have a beer in the state of Pennsylvania, but he could legally own a firearm. The National Rifle Association, which defends gun ownership, is known for its lobbying and political influence.

Indeed, nowhere in his White House speech did Biden mention the semi-automatic weapon used to try to kill Trump, which is clear evidence of how firmly entrenched the gun culture is in the United States.

America's glorification of political violence since the 18th century, its widespread divisions and polarisation, and its plethora of guns are all the ingredients necessary for considerably more future servings of American cherry pie.