It’s been less than two months since the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and lawmakers and law enforcement continue to To investigate what happened, The presidential campaign has largely moved on.
Investigators say the gunman was likely Less motivated by political ideology Than he had by will to commit a mass shooting. But for researchers studying political violence, there are still concerns about the risk of more dangerous incidents in the United States this election cycle and beyond. The last incident of attempted murder—later Intimidation of election officials and workers 2020 by Trump supporters and attempted coup on January 6, 2021, Not to mention speeches from the Republican candidate and his allies – to increase their anxiety. In July, a group of legal scholars, national security experts and law enforcement called on the selectmen Officers to make Election Security Task Force at state and national level to respond and monitor election related threats. (The Department of Justice launched a Election Threat Task Force in 2021but Election workers And officials still say they are Worried for their safety.)
Gun violence researchers are also concerned. Garen Wintemute, a physician and founder Violence Prevention Research Program at UC DavisGun violence has been studied Since 1980. Towards the end of 2021, the center turned its attention to political violence. Last year, it published the results of a large survey Digging into Americans’ beliefs on the issue.
“A small but lethal proportion of the population makes violence generally or always justified to advance political ends,” Winmutt and his colleagues wrote. write down. About 19 percent of the respondents said that “Having a strong leader” was more important than having a democracy. About 14 percent predicted a civil war in the United States in the next few years, and just under eight percent said that in the next few years, 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 study this fall with the latest insights into the appetite for political violence in the United States Before they do, Wintemute shared with Vox some initial takeaways from his findings, along with some ideas about what people can do to make countries less vulnerable to political violence.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What does the 2024 data reveal about the risk of political violence in the United States?
Cook the Winter Mute: We see a sustained level of support for the idea of political violence and willingness to become combatants when civil war breaks out. There is a clear connection to some subset of firearm ownership, but also to racism and sexism and homophobia—pretty much any brand of fear and hatred you care to mention.
What we’re seeing bears out the assumptions and predictions people made years ago, but there’s two pieces of good news: One is that gun purchases have finally returned to essentially baseline levels. [from 2020 and 2021.] This is a leading indicator and we watch it like a hawk. Another piece of good news is that gun violence rates were alarmingly high in 2020 and 2021, but dropped in 2022 and 2023. So far, we don’t see growth in 2024 from 2023
But I will put an asterisk on that. We are living through this in real time. I think people who have watched this closely probably agree that the set of circumstances that could lead to political violence in this country in the next few months is a closely contested election, with momentum swinging toward the Democrats, and political violence has already occurred, including high-profile examples.
We are in this situation today. The barometer fluctuates a bit, but right after the assassination attempt I was asked, did you think it was going to happen, what happened to Donald Trump in Pennsylvania? You can’t predict specifics, but for weeks, I’ve been finishing each day, thinking: Wow, we made it another day. Yes, it’s going to happen. With the same level of certainty, I think it will happen again. Whether it will involve an elected official as a target, I cannot say. But we’ve opened the door to political violence this election season, and there are still leaders who use rhetoric that enables violence. And we will all pay the price for it, I suspect.
Don’t you think this is the end of political violence in this election cycle?
I personally think that large-scale political violence is really, really unlikely. Given our 2024 data I feel more sanguine about that prediction. We asked people, suppose there was a right-wing rebellion or a left-wing rebellion. Do you support the government? In both cases, most respondents said no. I take this as good news. Large scale violence is really impossible. A few months from now, I may feel differently.
But sporadic outbreaks, especially if the warring states are really close – is that possible? sure Election officials may be trying to intimidate? absolutely
Most of us, most of the time, and some of us, all of the time, don’t think about how we solve this country’s problems. We will react negatively when people use violence.
What we really need to work on is creating a culture that is not receptive to the promotion of political violence, so it may happen here and there but we will not see a sustainable chain of events.
Where does most political violence come from?
Perhaps the most influential social movement in the United States right now is Christian nationalism, which not only holds the United States, traditionally, as a Christian nation, but that the end times are coming and we need to be ready.
I think of it partly as a researcher and partly as a clinician. Emotional trauma is like physical trauma; It may heal, but it leaves a scar. It changes the person. So those who have endured trauma after trauma, or who have seen their privileged status erode in this society, need to understand everything. So how does some of it all make sense? They blame someone, where you get xenophobia and replacement theory and so on. You find a way to make it right. You start thinking, I’m willing to kill and kill to protect what I believe in. This is how the war begins.
What works to prevent political violence? What do we know?
We have some information on this. We asked people: If a civil war broke out, how likely would you be to do any of the following? They start by leaving the country and killing a non-combatant from the other side, ending with a bunch of options in between. Participated as a warrior in the middle. It was a small number of people who said yes.
We asked people who said there was absolutely no chance they would participate as fighters, if you were urged to do so by family, friends, religious leaders, community leaders, or the media, would you change your position? And conversely, we asked those who said they would be fighters, would you change your position in response to that same party?
People who started out saying “I’m not going to be a fighter” weren’t open to change. It doesn’t matter the source of the influence. For fighters, a large number will change if their family tells them not to, or friends or even some media source. I was literally dancing around this office, looking at the numbers on the screen, because it led directly to intervention.
Basically, the majority of people out there who don’t think violence is justified need to talk about it, because you’re not going to change your mind, and we can prove it. But the people on the other side, if you talk to them – we’re talking about people who are talking to family and friends, or the media outlets that put it in their programming – we can create an unacceptable environment for political violence. And in doing so, we can expect it to work.
