Donald Trump was helped off stage after his July 13 shooting, an assassination attempt that appears motivated by non-political factors. Photo via Getty Images/Anna Moneymaker

Mental Health

Was the Shooting of Donald Trump “Political Violence” or Something Else?

BU experts point to possible bullying and America’s gun culture as more likely roots of the attack

Despite the nation’s polarized politics, Donald Trump’s near-assassination on July 13 united Republican leaders, their Democratic counterparts, and the media about one thing: the attack was “political violence,” officially defined as “the deliberate use of power and force to achieve political goals.”

“America’s Political Violence Crisis,” Time magazine trumpeted two days after Thomas Crooks’ bullet grazed the former president’s ear. Foreign Affairs magazine published “The Rising Tide of Political Violence: An Attempted Assassination of Trump Is Part of a Global Trend.” Senator J. D. Vance (R-Ohio), days before being nominated as Trump’s running mate and mere hours after the shooting, tweeted that President Joe Biden’s accusations about the Republican nominee’s authoritarianism “led directly” to the attempt on Trump’s life. Biden agreed that Americans needed to “cool it” with incendiary words—including himself, admitting error in saying it was “time to put Trump in a bullseye” before the attack.

Two weeks removed, however, experts say Crooks’ motives may have been more attention-getting than political. His planning was bipartisan: a review of his phone showed searches for Trump as well as Biden, and the Democratic National Convention. Investigators also say the 20-year-old had been bullied in school and grown enamored of gun culture. 

A mass shootings expert told the New York Times that while targeting a politician made the shooting appear politically motivated, Crooks might have wanted rather to commit mass violence, with the nearby rally making a convenient venue. The shooter researched John Kennedy’s assassination online and apparently registered for the rally on the same day, one week before the event.

“Epidemiological studies show that the vast majority of individuals with serious mental illness are never violent,” says Nicholas Wagner, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at the College of Arts & Sciences. He studies, among other things, risk factors that can influence or predict the likelihood of violent behavior in adolescence and adulthood.

Similarly, not all people who are bullied or own guns turn violent. But both can become entwined with gun violence, Boston University experts on those topics say.

“Taken together, research evidence indicates an association between bullying victimization and weapon-carrying,” says bullying expert Melissa Holt. The director of Kilachand Honors College and professor of counseling psychology at Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, Holt says that “to understand which youth might be at greatest risk” for carrying weapons at schools, “additional factors—e.g., peer aggression—should be considered.”

Parents and teachers can be on the lookout for specific warning signs that a child is being bullied, Holt adds, including “somatic symptoms—headaches, stomach aches—a decline in academic grades, avoidance of social situations or prior friends, changes in mental health, and difficulty sleeping.”

Reducing the incidence of bullying requires “evidence-based bullying prevention programs that take a whole-school approach,” involving the entire school community, she says. “Schools should also maintain clear policies on bullying and practices for reporting and responding to bullying that align with best practices.”

As for guns, “there is an abundance of evidence showing a strong correlation between lax firearm laws, high presence of firearms, and higher rates of gun violence,” says Michael Ulrich, associate professor of health law, policy, and management at the School of Public Health.

Ulrich, who has a joint appointment at the School of Law, says that “when we talk about gun culture, I think it’s important that we don’t treat gun owners as a monolith.… Gun culture was centered on hunting and precision shooting for much of history before a shift to self-defense that was largely orchestrated by the [National Rifle Association].” That shift germinated a “‘good guys with guns versus bad guys with guns’ binary that, I think, contributes to an accompanying righteousness for some people, who believe guns are a way to punish or to release their emotions.

“The growing normalization of guns and gun violence is a dangerous combination,” he says. The problem is that it’s hard to predict who may turn violent and when, especially with young people, Ulrich says: “Generally, we should worry about people who demonstrate things like anger and a lack of empathy in combination with a fondness for or access to guns, and a lack of respect or appreciation for the harm they can cause.”

“One of the best predictors of gun violence is access to guns,” agrees Wagner. He cites research to argue that there’s a “robust association between gun ownership and firearm homicide rates in the US between 1981 and 2010.”

Red flag laws, under which judges can order firearms taken from someone deemed dangerous by police and family, can help in such situations, Ulrich says, though research suggests they may curb suicides more than attacks on others. “Age restrictions are also useful,” he adds. “Younger people are more impulsive, willing to ignore risks, and less likely to think long-term. We have started seeing third parties, such as parents, held accountable for shootings when they negligently enable access to guns or break the law themselves.”

For mass shootings, “restrictions on large-capacity magazines and semiautomatic rifles can be useful,” says Ulrich. (Crooks used an AR-15-style rifle.) But “there is no single solution for our gun violence problem, so a number of laws will be important in reducing shooting incidents—but also in shifting our gun culture to have a greater understanding and appreciation for the risk and harm of firearms.”

Wagner sees value in “carefully working towards identifying specific indicators of risk” for violence—gun violence included—but “we should ensure we are committing energy to gun policies that we know will reduce gun-related deaths,” while also investing in “strategies that we know will support children’s healthy development and protect against pathways toward violence.”

Ultimately, Ulrich says, responsible firearms owners may be the best allies in “helping to change the gun culture and reinstall the respect and appreciation that should accompany firearm ownership. Trusted messengers are always more likely to have an impact within their own community. They can also help to advocate for gun safety measures that can mitigate gun violence while leaving Second Amendment rights in place.”