Four Decades Ago, a Presidential Assassination Attempt Spurred a National Push for Gun Safety. Today, We Must Learn From Our Past.
By: Kris Brown, Brady President
The assassination attempt on Donald Trump was horrifying — and eerily familiar. Like so many other Americans, I watched the terrifying scene play out: the sound of shots fired, panic and screams from the crowd, Secret Service members diving to protect the former President.
Sadly, I’d seen this scene before.
In 1981, a would-be assassin shot President Ronald Reagan while he was leaving an event in Washington, D.C. Like Donald Trump, Reagan survived the attack. But White House Press Secretary Jim Brady suffered a devastating gunshot wound to the head — an injury that left him partially paralyzed for the rest of his life.
Jim Brady and Ronald Reagan came from similar political backgrounds. Brady was a gun owner and longtime Republican. President Reagan was a lifelong NRA member who had previously opposed gun regulations. But as each man grappled with the aftermath of this shooting, they recognized that it was due, in no small part, to our nation’s easy access to guns.
So they changed course. Together Jim Brady and his wife Sarah — with the support of President Reagan, President Bill Clinton, and then-Senator Joe Biden — worked to pass the bipartisan Brady Bill and established the Brady Background Check System. Since its inception, the Background Check System has stopped more than 4.8 million sales of guns to individuals the American public believes should not have them.
In the aftermath of the Reagan assassination attempt, our contemporary gun violence prevention movement was born.
Today, decades after Brady was founded and in the aftermath of another grave act of political violence, we face a similar moment of reckoning. Once again, our nation has been rocked by an attempted Presidential assassination. Once again, someone with all-too-easy access to a gun has used it to incite anger, encourage fear, and disrupt our democratic process.
And once again, we have a choice. We can continue to normalize this assassination attempt — chalking it up to increasingly common shootings and acts of political violence in America. Or, like Jim Brady, Ronald Reagan, and others after them, we can acknowledge the truth about what is so often at the root of our political violence: easy access to guns. And we can work to change it.
After all, America’s gun violence epidemic has reached crisis levels. Despite the unceasing advocacy of the gun violence prevention movement, our policymakers have allowed the gun industry to flood our communities with firearms, including assault weapons designed for the battlefield.
Today, Americans own exponentially more guns — and experience exponentially more mass shootings — than in 1981. Americans are shot and killed with guns in their schools, in office buildings, in grocery stores, in their places of worship, and at home. Every day, 327 people are shot in America. Each day, 117 of them will die. In 1981, unintentional injuries — including from car crashes — was the number one killer of kids and teens. Today, it’s guns.
The casualties of this uniquely American problem extend far beyond victims themselves. Our youth, many of whom have seen loved ones killed with guns, have been forced to participate in school lock-down drills since kindergarten. Mass shooting survivors of all ages have to live with the horrific reality of PTSD and survivors guilt, much like soldiers returning from combat. And there are no words to describe the ever-present grief of losing a loved one to guns. It is a tragic club that far too Americans are unwilling members of, with hundreds more joining their ranks every single day.
The attack on July 13 didn’t happen in a vacuum. We have seen the culture of firearms spread across America as the gun lobby has decided time and time again to put profits over people’s lives. Just days after a President Trump was nearly assassinated, Republican leaders at the Republican National Convention used their platform to raffle off AR-15s and brag about irresponsible gun ownership.
The Republican National Convention was a showing of the wrong choice. Wisconsinites watched as thousands of people poured into their state and were allowed to openly carry firearms, but but couldn’t carry metal water bottles in the security zone secret service set up. This put the lives of those at the convention and surrounding Wisconsin communities explicitly in danger — a danger that Donald Trump faced just days before.
We cannot continue to pretend that guns are unrelated to this latest tragedy, and double down on blocking common-sense safety measures supported by a majority of Americans.
We must come together as a country and declare that this will be the turning point for our country. It is time to put our differences aside and find common ground, passing sensible solutions that respect the Second Amendment and responsible gun ownership while keeping weapons of war away from those that would harm themselves or others.
These are not partisan questions. Just as we did as a nation after the Reagan assassination attempt, we can band together regardless of politics to protect the democratic ideals upon which our country was founded.
Let us all take a page out of Jim and Sarah Brady’s book and not let this moment pass without learning from what got us here. Far from being too early for these discussions, this shooting is a sign that — once again — we were too late.
