Seventy-five years ago, world-renowned American political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset published his definitive work explaining the differences between Canadian and American political culture. Using the early westward expansion of both countries as an example, he contrasted the Canadian governments’ planned approach of targeted immigration, assigned homesteads and the pre-existing presence of a national police force, (the Northwest Mounted Police, precursor to the RCMP) with the chaotic, lawless and frequently violent settlement of the American west, unsupervised by government and dominated by guns and private sector interests.
Needless to say, little has changed since then. Canada continues to be seen as a stable, law-abiding nation whose constitution promotes “peace, order and good government.” In the United States, guns and violence continue to be a defining characteristic of that political culture. The “right to bear arms” found in the Second Amendment of the American constitution has long been the justification for proponents of gun culture, despite the classic interpretation by former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Berger demonstrating the fundamental error of that argument. Simply put, Berger pointed out that the amendment, introduced in the late 1700’s, was intended to apply to the various militia of that day, not to individuals, nor to the political reality of the 20th century. [i] However Berger’s so-called “collective” interpretation of the amendment was challenged and eventually overturned to a large extent by the gun lobby, in a narrow (5-4) decision of the Supreme Court along ideological lines in 2008. Led by Justice Antonin Scala, the conservative majority overruled their liberal colleagues and set the stage for further entrenchment of the gun culture, arguing the amendment could apply to individuals as well.
Thanks to this persistent, and many would argue flawed, understanding of the constitution, there are nearly 300 million registered guns in the U.S. today. Estimates of the number of illegal weapons in the country range anywhere from two to four times that number. Making matters more complicated is the fact that guns fall under state jurisdiction, and all but four states have some form of “open carry” policy, meaning the weapon an individual is carrying must be all or partially visible. Nearly a third of open carry states do not require the owner to have a permit. In this alternative universe, the most serious debate over guns currently taking place in the United States is focused on the relative merits of various interpretations of open carry.[ii]
Meanwhile, as anyone following American news or visiting the United States is only too well aware, guns and violence are omnipresent. Many restaurants in the south have signs indicating they have “gun check” facilities. Many department stores have at their main entrance not the jewellery or perfume counters of Canada but ones highlighting leather holsters, gun belts and gun cases. Signs posted along a moving walkway in a major airport such as Atlanta ask travelers “Have you remembered to remove the bullets from your gun?” Even towns or villages with a population under 1,000 can be almost guaranteed to have a gun shop. And virtually every major American city has a no-go zone where even local police are loathe to venture.
The result, not surprisingly, has been a country with by far the highest rate of homicides per 100,000 citizens of any G7 country, (at 6.52 compared with Canada’s 1.97 in 2020).[iii] Mass shootings – at schools, churches and in the workplace — are not only commonplace but on the increase. Responses to this violence have included suggestions that teachers and ministers carry guns, or that businesses employ security services. Even modest attempts to impose minor limitations on gun ownership have encountered fierce resistance from powerful organized lobbies such as the National Rifle Association and the disproportionate votes of rural states, as both Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama learned.[iv]
Nor have politicians been immune to gun violence. Four American presidents have been assassinated, including John F. Kennedy in 1963. There have been another 34 thwarted attempts to kill a sitting president, fully eight of which were during the presidency of Barack Obama, and two of which – Theordore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan – succeeding in wounding the president.[v] Since the death of President Kennedy, both his brother (and presidential candidate) Robert Kennedy, and prominent civil rights leader Martin Luther King, were also assassinated. And while the horrendous January 6, 2021 assault on the national Capital remains an unprecedented act of political violence, it is surely worth noting that another political insurrection was only narrowly avoided in 2021 when the FBI arrested 13 individuals plotting to kidnap and kill Michigan state governor Gretchen Whitmer, storm the state capital and “start a civil war.”[vi]
In this very real sense, then, the recent assassination attempt on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is, quite simply, nothing new. Nor is the response of the American public particularly surprising. Rather than focus on the question of gun access and ownership, the vast majority of comments have been focused on the perceived incompetence of the Secret Service, and on the need for greater police protection for all politicians.
What is new, however, is the response of the Republican establishment, and the victim himself, to this latest unsuccessful assassination attempt. While virtually all Democratic spokespersons from the President on down have expressed outrage at the act and sympathy for the victim, the MAGA Republicans have uniformly used this event to attack Democrats, accusing them of being indirectly responsible due to their allegedly hyperpartisan critiques of Republicans and of Trump himself. This Kafka-esque approach was epitomized by Republican Senator J.D. Vance, (now Trump’s running mate), who wasted no time in tweeting after the incident – without any evidence — that “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”[vii] And when not criticizing Democrats directly, various other Republican spokespersons have called for a de-escalation of the violent rhetoric which they accuse “the left” of employing about Trump. Hence the statement of Republican Senator Tim Scott that “this was an assassination attempt aided and abetted by the radical left and the corporate media incessantly calling Trump a threat to democracy, a fascist or worse.”[viii]
In a political universe already turned upside down by the behaviour of a former and quite possibly future American president, the space for rational debate and constructive criticism are shrinking, and so is the future of democracy in America. Lest we assume that Canada remains immune to such folly due to the significant differences in our political culture, the comments of one of the most hyperpartisan, fact-free politicians of the day should not be overlooked. It was none other than Alberta’s premier, Danielle Smith, who opined in the aftermath of the attack that ‘the left’ was using dangerously inciteful language here in Canada as well.
“I certainly hope that some of the progressive politicians here are careful of their language because they’ve been talking about conservative politicians in the same way and they need to dial it down,” the premier told reporters as a premiers’ conference began Monday in Halifax… “Have you not looked at the headlines about how Pierre Poilievre is described as dangerous? How the leader of the Opposition in Alberta has described me as dangerous? When you start using that kind of rhetoric, that ends up creating an elevated risk for all of us.”[ix]
In the words of a famous American movie, it appears we are not in Kansas any more.
[i] https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/second-amendment-does-not-guarantee-right-own-gun-gun-control-p-99
[ii] https://urbancarryholsters.com/blog/post/open-concealed-carry/
[iii] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1374211/g7-country-homicide-rate/
[iv] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/08/16/obama-gun-control-227625/
[v] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots
[vi] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/us/gretchen-whitmer-michigan-militia.html
[vii] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/potential-trump-vp-vance-accuses-biden-admin-inciting-violence-wild-rhetoric
[viii] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/potential-trump-vp-vance-accuses-biden-admin-inciting-violence-wild-rhetoric
